Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Community Foundation

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At the Community Foundation we believe that if we address barriers and include people with a diverse range of lived and learned experiences, our work will be richer and make more of a difference.

Our approach

Being held back because of who you are or where you’re from is not acceptable. But some groups and communities face inequalities and injustices in the way opportunities and resources are shared in society. At the Community Foundation, we value diversity and treating everyone fairly. We comply with equality and anti-discrimination laws and regulation. But we also seek to go beyond legal requirements to understand, implement and promote greater diversity, equity and inclusion. We also want to tackle prejudice, discrimination and unconscious bias at the Foundation and across everything we do.

What these words mean to us.

Diversity: means people’s different experiences, identities and points of view. Our focus is the diverse characteristics and backgrounds of our area’s population. That includes legally protected characteristics and other things which can affect people’s life chances, like appearance, gender identity, caring responsibilities, being from a working-class background, or being a migrant, refugee or asylum seeker.
Equity: means everyone, no matter their background or characteristics, getting fair treatment and access to opportunities. This means recognising that some people experience inequality and injustice. So, for us, treating everyone the same (‘equality’) is not enough – we must strive to remove barriers.
Inclusion: means everyone feeling they belong, being safe and respected, able take part and realise their potential. For us, this involves striving to reach, listen to and involve people in our work who tend to be under-represented or whose voices tend not to be heard.
Prejudice means an unjustified, usually negative, attitude towards a person or a group of people based on their different characteristics or background.
Discrimination means treating a person or a group of people unfairly because of their differences.
Unconscious bias is where, without actively intending to, people favour others who are most like them.

Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy sets out in more detail how we approach our responsibilities. It includes information on how we address these areas when we recruit trustees and staff.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy

What have we been doing?

In October 2019, we announced a focus on philanthropy’s role in addressing equity and inclusion. We set out to celebrate our region’s diversity while shining a light on the work of organisations who help communities with lived experience of racism, homophobia and other types of discrimination. We wanted to widen the lens of whose giving gets to be in the philanthropy picture. And we wanted to address some uncomfortable truths, because we and others have a responsibility to do more to tackle prejudice and build inclusion so the North East can be a more equitable society. Our key messages were that we knew we needed to do more, we didn’t have all the answers but we hoped we were asking the right questions.

In March 2021, we published our Vital Signs reports on diversity, equity and inclusion. They examine the experience of five groups whose contribution to the vibrancy of our region is often inhibited by deep-seated inequalities: women; people with learning disabilities; Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities; disabled people and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

We’ve also taken time to look at our own practices. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Policy came as a result of listening to our membership of individuals, voluntary organisations, businesses and public bodies. Our strategy to 2025 commits us to address diversity across our goals. At the end of 2021, we agreed and published benchmarks for the diversity of our staff and trustees against which we now measure ourselves.

Benchmarking our own diversity

Our diversity

The Board has agreed benchmarks for the diversity of our staff and trustees against which we will measure how well we reflect our communities. The data below was last updated in December 2022.

	Benchmark	Our Board	Our staff
Gender	50% women : 50% men	54% women : 46% men	46% women : 54% men
Disability	20% self-identify as disabled	0%	9%
Ethnicity	At least 7% from a Black, Asian or other non-White ethnic background	8%	4%
Sexual orientation	At least 3% identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual	0%	8%
Socio-economic background	63% from intermediate or working-class backgrounds	34%	42%

Why benchmarks and not targets?

When we say benchmark, we mean a standard against which we measure ourselves. Whereas a target is something that must be met. We think benchmarks are more helpful than targets, as they give us a way to ensure we are consciously considering diversity and checking how reflective our trustees and staff are of the communities we serve and are from. While we might not always perfectly fit a benchmark, if we move too far from it, we will say so and set ourselves actions in response. For example, we might review our recruitment processes or target under-represented groups. And, sometimes, these actions might require a target. Benchmarks also allow us to recognise change in our region’s demographics. For example, in the most recent census, the proportion of people in North East England who are from Black, Asian and other non-white ethnic backgrounds has risen to 7% from 5%. So we’ve changed our benchmark to match.

How has each benchmark been set?

We have taken account of demographics in North East England where possible, as the area we serve and where our staff and trustees live and work. For ethnicity this means our benchmarks may be very different to those of organisations based in London. We chose 50:50 as our gender balance benchmark to reflect the whole population, especially given our Board is drawn from our diverse membership. However, we note that data on the UK’s voluntary sector workforce shows 60% are women.

We chose our disability benchmark based on the percentage of disabled people in the working age population in England and Wales. However, we recognise that there are challenges in ensuring staff and trustees feel confident in self-identifying as disabled as defined by the Equality Act 2010.
Our benchmark for ethnicity is based on 7% of the population of North East England now identifying as being from a Black, Asian, Mixed or other non-White ethnic group in the most recent census. This is up from 5% at the last census.
For sexual orientation, census data shows that 1.5% of North East England’s population identifies as lesbian, gay or bisexual while, nationally, 1% list their sexual orientation as ‘other’. We have chosen 3% as our benchmark as significant numbers of people don’t respond or say ‘don’t know’ to this question and ONS figures suggest the numbers of younger people identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual is increasing.
On socio-economic background, analysis by the Social Mobility Commission shows that 63% of the UK’s population as a whole are from working class or intermediate backgrounds based on parental occupation at age 14. Working class covers technical and craft occupations, manual and service jobs and people long-term unemployed. Intermediate covers clerical roles, other non-managerial ‘office’-type roles not requiring professional qualifications and small business owner

What about diversity and inclusion in recruitment?

We aim to have a staff team with diverse lived and learned experience, relevant to their job roles, and broadly reflective of our communities. We have standards and procedures to ensure open staff recruitment which attracts diverse candidates and gives everyone a fair chance regardless of background. This includes a requirement to always publish the salary for job roles. We take positive action to attract candidates from under-represented groups. We do not ask for specific qualifications unless they clearly link to a role’s requirements. We remove information that might identify protected characteristics before applications go to a panel. The Foundation is a Living Wage Employer and has a remuneration policy which is explained in our audited financial statements which you can find on the resources page of our website. Although we are not required to, we also report in our financial statements on the gender pay gap.

We also aim to have a Board with diverse lived and learned experience that broadly reflects communities in our area. Our governing document sets out how our four membership groups appoint two trustees each through open nominations and elections. The Board co-opts up to five more trustees to ensure we draw on a range of skills and experience. In advertising vacancies and when recruiting trustees, we will take positive action to make sure we attract under-represented groups. Trustees are not required to have specific qualifications except where relevant to a role (e.g. accountancy qualifications for the post of Treasurer). More information on trustee recruitment is in our standing orders.

What about other aspects of diversity?

We are considering publishing benchmarks on age. From ONS data, we know that 35% of all adults in North East England are under 40, while the proportion of the working age population aged 21-39 is 39%. We’re going to do some more work on what our benchmarks should be and would welcome any suggestions.

What's next?

We will update our benchmarking data every year based on anonymous surveys of our staff and trustees. We will also update the benchmarks as demographic data changes e.g. through Census results.

Our aim is to move towards having a staff and trustee body that reflects the benchmarks identified. The current priority is to encourage more disabled people, younger people and people from Black, Asian and other non-White ethnic backgrounds to apply for Board and staff vacancies when they arise.

We are also working on diversity, equity and inclusion in our grant-making. Using data from our new grants system, we plan to analyse and publish further information about our reach to diverse communities and how well that reflects where we think we should be.

As ever, none of this means our conversations are over – but we hope what we are saying and doing shows our commitment to addressing inequalities and injustices.

Diversity, equity and inclusion