The Diversity Forum is a collective on a mission to make the social investment sector more inclusive for all.
The Adebowale Commission on Social Investment recommended that every social investment institution should sign up to our original Manifesto, recognising it as ‘a significant first step for any social investment institution that is serious about their commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI)’.
This year, we have refreshed our Manifesto and doubled its number of signatories. We’re now looking to share our work with other funders, including those not directly involved in social investment. We hope our Manifesto 2.0 will help you think and plan strategically on your EDI journey.
What do we mean by a Manifesto?
Our Manifesto 2.0 is intended for any organisation who has asked ‘Where do I start on my EDI journey?’ or ‘Where do I go next?’
It’s made up of seven guiding principles and ten suggested initial actions.
By listening to feedback from CEOs and working with our Diversity Champions and Steering Group, we have developed principles that can be tailored to any organisation, providing an overall direction and set of steps for approaching any EDI challenge. This could range from planning an organisational approach to a particular characteristic, such as race or disability, to a more specific challenge relating to a particular project.
How is this different from other charters and schemes?
The Manifesto 2.0 is action-oriented and designed to support and structure all EDI work in an organisation, so it should complement or encourage sign-ups to most other charters and schemes.
For instance, as part of your work towards our third principle – an inclusive culture – you might set a goal to sign up to the Disability Confident Scheme. Or, if you’ve already done this, you could recognise this as your progress so far and set an annual goal for how you can embed this further into your organisation or measure its effectiveness on a sustainable basis.
We hope our Manifesto will help you to reinforce other strands of EDI within your organisation and bring them together into a unified approach. However, if you find that there are challenges in working towards multiple schemes – for example if they ever seem at odds or overlap – we would be happy to discuss and work with you on this!
Is the Manifesto only for social investment organisations?
We think the Manifesto is a useful resource for any organisation to structure their EDI goals. Even if you don’t wish to get involved in other Diversity Forum activities such as the Diversity Champions Network, you can still hold yourself to account by setting and reporting on annual goals.
Some of our suggested actions for working towards EDI relate specifically to social investment – for example, reviewing the organisation’s portfolio and investment processes. If you don’t make social investments, the same concepts could be adapted, for example, to reflect on the diversity of your grantees, funding beneficiaries or the diversity in management of partners you work with. Similarly, you could review your processes for making grants or how finances are spent within your own organisation.
It is important to stress that the ten actions are just suggestions – they are not mandatory requirements for signatories.
We also want organisations to hold us accountable by offering feedback, advice and ideas for other support or training we can offer to promote inclusion.
What does signing the Manifesto involve?
To ensure senior buy-in and awareness of its commitments, we require the Manifesto to be signed by both an organisation’s CEO and a Board representative, ideally the Chair.
Each organisation also nominates someone to act as an operational EDI lead, who then joins us as a ‘Diversity Champion’. Diversity Champions are invited to quarterly meetings to connect and collaborate with their peers. They are also offered support through informal one-to-one catch-ups to discuss their progress and address any challenges.
By signing the Manifesto, organisations commit to annual self-reporting. This may be in the form of a report, video, blog, datasets or a mixture of these. An example is this report from UnLtd, one year after their internal equity audit.
Many of the organisations we have worked with have used the principles to review their current EDI work and identify areas that they could focus on more. We encourage signatories to use our seven principles to set SMART annual goals and, for accountability, to allocate individual or team resources and responsibilities to these goals. Some organisations, like Charity Bank, have found it useful to do this exercise before signing, to ensure a proactive commitment to the Manifesto and its actions.
To complement organisations’ self-reporting, we are now recruiting a consultant to support the development of a flexible and user-centred reporting structure to assess how effectively the Manifesto is supporting organisations to be more inclusive.
A two-way relationship
Whilst holding organisations accountable in a compassionate, supportive and structured way, we also want organisations to hold us accountable by offering feedback, advice and ideas for other support or training we can offer to promote inclusion.
Examples of us acting on people’s suggestions include a session we ran on EDI policy (available to watch on our YouTube channel) and an upcoming workshop for relationship managers to share their frontline experiences when working on diversity-focussed funding programmes.
If, for any reason, the Manifesto does not feel right for your organisation, please tell us why and what we might be able to do to improve it – or how we can support you to find alternative ways of working towards your EDI goals.
We hope that our Manifesto 2.0 is a useful resource for most organisations and we are keen to work with you to progress your EDI journey.
For any questions, comments, feedback or further information, get in touch.
Get involved
Are you ready to act on your EDI commitments? Read more about the Diversity Forum on the Funders Collaborative Hub.
