Section 4: Sizing up problems and finding solutions

As stated in Section 3, the DEI deficiencies in the charity sector (and society at large) are cultural at root. This point should not be underestimated. It means that only intentional, sizeable and persistent DEI efforts will generate significant progress. It also means that the power of prevailing culture may generate resistance and backlash should transformation begin and the face of the sector change.¹

Meaningful recommendations for DEI are already in circulation. There are numerous practical suggested actions that make sense. These include a variety of approaches to recruitment to reduce the possibilities for discriminatory practice (see Babbage, 2018, for one example) and opportunities for people inside charities (especially those with power and influence) to learn how to do better on DEI.

But cultural problems cannot be easily eradicated through retraining. We need to invest in the foundations of DEI culture, putting conditions in place so that diversity, equity and inclusion, in its many forms, can flourish and so that its opposite – racial homogeneity, inequity and exclusion – is deemed a fundamental breach of what charities stand for.

Our suggested solutions and recommendations for actions on DEI are multi-levelled, spanning from culture through to everyday practice. If we cast back to Section 2 and some of the harms experienced by BAME people who engaged with this project, and Section 3 and the discussion of the power of culture, we can see three distinct levels where DEI deficits are set and need to be reset. They are:

micro

practice in organisations

meso

the overall regime in the charity sector, including power dynamics and money flows

macro

the landscape, including wider social and cultural norms, in which a sector operates

The micro, meso and macro levels are all elements of transition theory. This is concerned with how systems – of which the charity sector is an example – work and how they change (Sinha and Millar, 2015).

The micro level is that of the organisation (or project), i.e. the front line where BAME charity people experience the sector. It is the level of everyday practice, policy and procedures that affect recruitment, retention and promotion, as well as those that determine whether and how BAME people can report experiences of racism and the process of investigation and sanctions against those deemed to be behaving inappropriately.

Our empirical work suggests that, among other issues at the micro level, BAME people feel held to a higher standard than white counterparts and there is a lack of faith that BAME experiences of racism are being addressed meaningfully.

The meso level is that of the entire infrastructure that perpetuates the ‘way things are’: i.e. the ‘regime’ (Sinha and Millar, 2015). The regime sets the ‘rules of the game’ and is formed by powerful institutions, legislation, power structures and vested interests, and existing knowhow (and limits to this). According to Scrase and Smith (cited in Sinha and Millar, 2015) the regime tends ‘to self-stabilize around the status quo’. This may be because well-placed white people in the charity sector wish to preserve their jobs, power, status and income (Fitzpatrick, 2020).

At this level, some BAME participants providing input into the project were acutely aware of the scale of the issues. One person suggested that DEI (or the lack of it) is governed by ‘some very large systems’ (interview – BAME respondent).

The third level is the macro level. If the meso determines the rules of the game, the macro is the playing field: in other words, it is the context in which the game takes place. The macro includes major contextual factors, such as social conditions and features of (and changes in) population and technology. Crucially, it also encompasses ‘mental models’ – social and cultural norms that inform how we think and act.

Our recommendations cover the micro, meso and macro levels in order to generate the culture change needed for charities to impact meaningfully on DEI in the sector and in society through their work. The work carried out for this project was based in England, but we would encourage all UK charities to take up these recommendations.

1. An experiment on hypothetical political candidates suggests that voters dislike those coming through diversity initiatives. If voters are offered candidates described as having been ‘included on a list from underrepresented backgrounds’ and others are described as people who ‘just got involved in their party’ rather than benefiting from a diversity scheme, the voters prefer the latter type of candidate, regardless of that candidate’s ethnicity; see Martin and Blinder (2020).