The project
Making Diversity Count – the project behind this report – began in a conversation between ACEVO and Voice4Change England in 2018. From the start there was a determination to avoid becoming ‘just another diversity report’. The aim was to offer something new and helpful in a context where everyone says diversity is such a good thing, but there is surprisingly little of it around in the charity sector.
Our focus on experiences of BAME people should in no way be taken to mean that we do not understand the connection between BAME and other marginalised populations or understand the need for joint efforts for justice and freedom. We also recognise that ‘race’ intersects with other issues such as gender, class and disability in ways that can mean that some people experience compounded multiple levels of exclusion all at once. Our specific focus on BAME people is intended to ensure that uncomfortable issues of ‘race’ and racism are faced fully by the charity sector.
To add value, we have tried to bring a point of difference to the diversity debate. In part, this comes from being an unusual collaboration: two civil society membership organisations – one ‘mainstream’ and one BAME-led. More specifically, the project is founded on a set of principles which we hope adds something different to previous diversity research. Two principles are worth mentioning at this point.
The first is the need to reframe the issue. Rather than saying that the charity sector has a (racial and ethnic) diversity problem, i.e. a relative lack of BAME people leading and working and volunteering in charities, the project starts from the premise that racism is a problem in the charitable sector, as it is in society at large. Added to this, it is a problem that is deep-lying, significant and unresolved. It manifests in ‘difficulty’ in relating to BAME people, and a lack of diversity is one example of this.
We recognise that this notion will be uncomfortable for some readers to face. But naming and owning the problem is critical to fundamentally changing the charity sector. We further develop this idea, and in particular a discussion of racism in Section 3.
A second principle that has informed our work is that it is right and proper that the debate on diversity in charities has at its core the experience, expertise and insights of BAME people who have seen the charity sector up close and personal. We take this approach as a matter of principle because debates about racial diversity can, paradoxically, end up excluding BAME people.
In particular we recognise the importance of believing BAME people about their experiences in the charity sector. The Me-Too movement reminds us of the damage done when women’s accounts of sexual harassment and sexual assault are disbelieved. We need to accept the weight of lived-experience testimony and avoid the temptation to deflect and deny.
This report, and the research that informs it, is intended to contribute to meaningful movement on racial diversity. It is not a manual or a ‘how-to’ guide. Nor does it provide a one-size-fits-all solution. However, it should be instructive, adaptable and practical. It requires that individual charities and leaders commit to action and, critically, that charity people and institutions, advocates and activists, come together collectively to make change happen, decisively and irreversibly.
We hope that everyone with the interests of the charity sector at heart will read and be stimulated by this report. That said, we have particularly aimed the work at people in leadership roles in the charity sector and those with access to levers of power – including recruiters, infrastructure organisations and funders. Typically, that group is disproportionately white, middle class and, especially in the largest charities, rather male. We hope that this work brings into their field of vision new perspectives and possibilities and ambitions for change. Second, we hope that BAME people and racial justice advocates and activists will be able to read this report and find evidence that they can use to advance their efforts – even though we recognise that they may already have many of the same (and more) insights as those articulated here.
We want charity funders to use this report to inform how they deploy their power, influence and money, and we have made some recommendations that affect them. However, we have not made detailed recommendations to funders about advancing their own (internal) diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices, as others, such as the Association of Charitable Funders (ACF, 2019) and Ten Years’ Time (Ten Years’ Time), are doing this important work and are making progress.
