Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Update

As an organisation, the Chartered Institute have been working on the foundational elements to support our long-term approach to equity, diversity and inclusion, in line with our 2023-2025 strategic aims. Part of this has been to focus on looking at our governance and how we support internal scrutiny and accountability.  

One of the key measures for the Chartered Institute is that we are representative of wider society across the UK, both internally and through our membership and events. Both aspects of this are a work in progress, but our foundation stones have been well laid. We have been proactive in engaging and supporting greater applicant diversity for vacant trustee roles. The outcome of this approach is that when we look at the board of trustees against protected characteristics, we have strong representation against gender, race & ethnicity, disability and neurodiversity. This enables the organisation to benefit from a broad range of skill sets, experience and professional knowledge to feed into the Executive Leadership Team. 

The EDI Committee, another foundational element, remains an important component to provide the knowledge base, lived and professional experience for EDI. Ultimately the committee was created to provide external scrutiny and accountability of the Chartered Institute and our work in this area. We recently had the opportunity to recruit some new members due to the end of terms. This provided an opportunity for us to reflect on the skills that could help us to move forward. We introduced a more inclusive recruitment and interview process with the intent that it would enable candidates to be the best version of themselves. Building on existing expertise within our existing committee membership and delivering greater diversity across a broad range of protected characteristics, visible differences, non-visible differences and cognitive diversity. The committee are passionate, engaged and aware of the need to be actively involved in all our work, including the support of volunteers around EDI. 

As the membership body that represent fundraisers, we are all aware of the importance of data to inform and drive decision making. Data provides information about the overall baseline and how you will measure change. We are committed to establishing a baseline and more effective way of capturing meaningful data, whilst realising that this needs to be an iterative process. The starting point will be how we frame the ask, provide context and explain need within a holistic approach with consideration around learning what is driving non-disclosure / non-completion and more effective engagement.  

As I mentioned earlier, the EDI committee recognise their role in helping the Chartered Institute and our volunteers to achieve the desired change and our ambitions around EDI. In our meeting last week members discussed how they could support our committees including Nations and SIGs in the future around a number of aspects including recruitment, bursaries and events. 

We are at the start of a process of working through what this looks like in detail. Discussions last week focused on a mentor type approach to cultivate a greater understanding of a principle-based solution. Members also identified the role of EDI champions as critical to ongoing support, engagement and monitoring within volunteer committees, I will continue to have discussions and will be meeting with members to collate their thoughts and views. The EDI committee has committed to prioritising the delivery of a solution by November 2023. It will be one that is able to leverage and maximise the difference skill sets, areas of focus and approaches of our EDI committee members, enabling that to be accessed in a two-way value exchange with our EDI champions. 

EDI is never a linear journey, there are times when aspirations, need and execution won’t always align. But we also have to ensure that the lens with which we view equity, diversity and inclusion is as broad as possible. Our desire to provide access, opportunity and development to under-represented voices remains, that commitment and focus came through loud and clear during the EDI committee meeting last week. Our task now is to make sure that we are not only demonstrating that commitment in practical terms, but also providing the evidence through transparent monitoring and reporting regarding our progress. This is not just the responsibility of the those that have EDI within their volunteer or professional titles, we must all consider how through our individual actions, we can further support the change we know is necessary.  

The Chartered Institute will be supporting National Inclusion Week, 25 September to 1 October, with content from our volunteers and EDI committee members, so look out for that next week. 

We are also always interested in hearing from new voices – so if you would like to share your experience in fundraising in the future please do get in touch.