Beyond paternalism
As well as meaningfully engaging with racism, another enabling condition for DEI culture to take hold is that the charity sector moves beyond its paternalistic history.
The concept of charity is hundreds of years old, and definitions of charity vary culturally. In Hebrew ‘Tzedakah’ is commonly translated as charity, and the root of the word (tzedek) means righteousness or justice. However, the etymological root of the English word for charity is the Latin term ‘caritas’, commonly translated as altruistic love. This philosophy, with its biblical underpinnings, can be seen in the Victorian concept of philanthropy.
However, while this idea of doing good deeds was in part born out of a sense of duty and shared humanity, there has been a more troubling side to charity.
One element of this shadow side is that purveyors of charitable work have used it to signal their virtue and self-righteousness with conspicuous displays of giving, at the same time as marking out philanthropists as being morally superior – a mode of thinking that lends itself to paternalism. In this mindset, just as there are moral superiors there are moral inferiors: people who are deficient and need to be saved – from themselves as much as anything else.
This in turn is used to justify powerful people doing things to or ’for’ the less powerful, and the setting up of clear demarcations between the ‘great and the good’ benefactors and the downtrodden beneficiaries. In paternalistic mode, power remains with the superior – the ‘giver’ – who decides who should be in receipt of charity and what kind of charity they need. Similarly, this model is not (primarily) interested in creating equitable systems or structures, or in major and meaningful redistribution of wealth or power – as these are believed to be in the ‘right’ hands already. This interest in both giving away money and keeping the status quo has been described as ‘philanthrocapitalism’ (Ramdas, 2011). Furthermore, it can be argued that charitable giving is an effective device for maintaining order and deference among the ‘less fortunate’ (Prochaska, 1990) towards elites.
Today, it has become normal to talk about people in terms of their assets as well as their needs; but more traditional ideas of benefactors and beneficiaries persist – such as charitable efforts riding to the rescue to ‘save the day.’
This behaviour can also be racialised to produce a colonialist paternalism (Buffet, 2013). It can bring money without understanding and side-line the knowhow and wisdom of BAME people – at once infantilising black and brown populations while simultaneously trying to save ‘them’. It can manifest in centring the role in social progress of certain white-led institutions, benefactors or radicals and marginalise the work of BAME people in struggle and liberation. Historically, this can be seen in the official story of the abolition of the slave trade, but even today there is the erasure of BAME activists and experiences in efforts to solve the climate crisis.1
This last example shows that what perhaps seem outdated notions of racialised paternalism and colonialism can still shape the way that charity and the narrative of social change work today. These ideas are transmitted across time through culture. And dominant culture affects how we all ‘think and act and, more importantly, the kind of criteria by which [we] judge others’ (Kinsey Goman, 2011).
A culture of paternalism can lead to resistance in charities to sharing or letting go of power – especially to people more traditionally thought of as ‘beneficiaries’. Racialised paternalism can further mean that BAME people are not seen as a ‘natural fit’ in the charity sector. A DEI culture requires that charities move beyond paternalism and live by the lessons of decades of work on the importance of the insights and knowledge of people ‘on the ground’ (OpenLearn, no date), as well as more recent work on the importance of lived-experience leaders (National Lottery Community Fund, 2019).
The third critical condition for building DEI culture is about how the charity sector thinks about and is held accountable for performance.
Towards accountability
One of the themes to emerge from engaging with BAME charity people and system-shapers – and, to a lesser extent, white charity leaders –is that of charity sector accountability for DEI performance. There was interest, especially among racial justice advocates and activists, in mechanisms of accountability that would mean continued failure to deliver on DEI would have consequences for charities and charity leaders.
Performance and accountability on DEI must be seen in the context of overall charity sector performance and accountability. The complex and subjective nature of the work undertaken by many charities makes performance hard to measure. This in turn means that, for many charities, it may be difficult to report meaningfully on progress, and it may also not be easy for outside parties to hold charities to account for their performance.
Amid this complexity, when recruiting, existing staff may prefer to bring in people who are ‘similar’ to them: people with whom incumbents are likely to get on. One BAME interviewee described the charity they worked for as very “relational”, where success depends on one’s relationships and networks. ‘Clubbable’ people – those who are perceived to ‘fit in’ – are highly desirable, even though they may be less capable than less clubbable counterparts.
As shown in the subsection above on racism, in a context in which racism is normalised and whiteness is associated with excellence, the question of who is seen as clubbable and who gets to be ‘in the club’ can be highly racialised (as well as classed and gendered). Therefore, these relational preferences can keep some BAME people out of the sector in the first place and can marginalise those who do enter the charity world.
In practice, it is not easy to hold charities accountable for these exclusions. They come dressed as hard-to-refute ‘common sense’ ideas. It is usual to hear phrases that support homogeneity in hiring. The emphasis may be on hiring the ‘best person for the job’ or a candidate who can ‘hit the ground running’ or one who ‘understands the sector’. It can also be a priority to have new colleagues who are ‘on the same page’ and to avoid people who could be seen to ‘rock the boat’.
These powerful tendencies and the complexities of the charity sector raise important questions about how to hold charities to account for DEI and DEI deficits. Ideally, part of the answer is for charity trustees and senior leaders to hold themselves to a higher standard. However, board members are part time, almost exclusively volunteers, and often deliberately distanced from the day-to-day operations of organisations. They may have little or nothing to do with hiring decisions or defer to those who have to work alongside new recruits. Additionally, and significantly, there is also a serious absence of diversity on many trustee boards. As a framework for accountability in terms of DEI, it cannot be assumed that trustees will always fulfil their role.
Other stakeholders such as funders, infrastructure and membership bodies, and regulators have a role in building the culture of accountability for DEI performance. However, movement in this direction is currently in a formative stage, and such system-shapers need to build their depth of knowledge on race equity to perform this function. Similarly, there is not currently a regulatory framework in place to provide incentives to charities to do better on DEI or for there to be consequences for serial ‘failure’.
Yet there are signs of progress. As noted in Section 2, the #CharitySoWhite campaign has brought to the fore issues of whiteness and racism in the charity sector. It has called to account powerful actors in the sector, for example by asking questions aimed at individual charities, such as how powerful and influential BAME staff are and how institutional racism may be playing out in charitable organisations (Civil Society, 2019). These are necessary questions, and it vital to have this external BAME-led scrutiny.
From a different vantage point, work is under way in the world of charitable trusts and foundations to address DEI questions both in their internal practice and in how they engage with existing and would-be grantees and investees (ACF, 2019). Even though this funder-led work is in an early phase, together with efforts such as #CharitySoWhite it is part of building an ecosystem of accountability: one that creates the environment in which DEI culture can grow.
Such endeavours need to be encouraged, and we suggest additional ways to address some of these accountability challenges in our concluding recommendations.
- See for example the cropping out of a photo of Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate when appearing alongside Greta Thunberg (Evelyn, 2020).
