The importance of annual diversity reporting

While there has been much work among charities to improve equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) practices in recent years, there is still plenty more to be done to tackle discrimination and prejudice in the workplace. 

 

According to latest Charity Commission research, less than one in ten (8%) trustees are from an ethnic minority background, compared to 14% of the UK population. Less than a third of those on charity boards are women and only a small minority are under 24 years old. 

 

Meanwhile, a report published by online recruitment platform Charity Job in 2022 found that only around a half (53%) of charities have stated a commitment to diversity and just one in ten have set diversity targets for recruitment.  

 

There are many measures charities can take to improve how they approach EDI/ Among them, they can ensure they are regularly reporting on diversity.  

 
Reporting on diversity among their employees and volunteers helps set benchmarks for successful and equitable recruitment and promotion processes, as well as highlighting to stakeholders and staff a commitment to supporting diversity. 

 

There are many charities who have already started on this journey. Here, we look at a campaign among environmental charities to encourage annual diversity reporting and outline what the sector can learn from their example. 

 

 

Call for annual reporting 

 

The environmental sector has a particular problem with EDI. According to research released in 2022, it is the least diverse profession, with only 4.8% of workers identifying as Black, Asian or from other ethnic minority groups.  

 

To tackle this, a campaign has launched to encourage charities to report on their racial diversity among workers, trustees, and volunteers each year.  

 

Called the RACE Report (Racial Action for the Climate Emergency), the campaign is led by a partnership that includes the organisations SOS-UK, Nature Youth Connection and Education, Hindu Climate Action and South Asians for Sustainability. 

 

It wants to set up a standardised data collection model for all UK environmental charities and their funders to help them better report on their diversity each year. 

 

According to the campaign, annual reporting “will bring more transparency to the sector, enable peer learning and boost efforts to make the charities [involved] more inclusive and diverse”. 

 

Campaign Representative Manu Maunganidze adds: “We urgently need transparency on the racial diversity of individual organisations’ trustee boards and staff teams, and we plan to deliver that through the RACE Report. 

 

“Without comparative data and evidence, the improvements will continue to be incremental, and the sector and its funders will continue to fall behind in their stated aims to fight for social and environmental justice.” 

 

 

Charities involved  

 

So far more than 30 charities and funders have pledged to take part. This includes Greenpeace, British Trust for Ornithology, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the Wildlife Trusts, Woodland Trust and The Zoological Society of London.  

 

 

The campaign hopes at least 100 organisations will sign up to commitments around annual diversity reporting this year.  

 

Also backing the campaign is Friends of the Earth. The charity’s Diversity and Inclusion Manager Jason Palmer says the campaign “has the potential” to be a “step change in the environmental movement, to meaningfully break down the barriers that had historically excluded people of colour from climate campaigning”. 

 

Catriona Corfield, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at the Woodland Trust says that “real change on racial equality in the environmental sector is long overdue”.  

 

She adds: “To get there we need transparency and accountability on where we are. I welcome the RACE report as a mechanism to do that.” 

 

 

Annual reporting in action 

 

Evidence from the US shows that annual reporting can be effective in improving diversity. RACE Report has been inspired by the work of the campaign Green 2.0 which has successfully encouraged more than 60 environmental not-for-profit organisations and foundations in the US to produce an annual transparency report on staff diversity. 

 

The project is in its fifth year and annually the information around diversity it collects has enabled it to produce an NGO and Foundation Transparency Report Card each year to show how the environmental sector is performing and highlight where improvement is needed.  

 

Its 2021 report showed that, on average, charities and funders taking part added 12 people of colour to their workforce between 2017 and 2021. Three more people of colour gained senior roles on average and the same tally joined their boards. 

 

This was the first year that Green 2.0 collected information about charity leaders. It found that 25% are people of colour. One area of improvement it noted was in recruiting indigenous people. None were heads of NGOs according to 2021’s report.  

 

Another finding was that a disproportionate level of funding is handed to white-led organisations by grant makers, compared to charities led by people of colour.  

 

One foundation reported funding twice as many white-led organisations, while the size of grants awarded to people of colour-led organisations was less than 1% of the funding awarded to their white counterparts.