Findings and reflection on the staff and board baseline diversity, equity and inclusion survey in Carnegie UK, including reflections from a Board member.

Introduction

This article discusses some of the findings from our use of an amended version of the Association of Charitable Foundations DEI survey.[1] It includes personal reflections from a board member on the diversity equity and inclusion work we are starting and on the survey activity.

Background

Over the past two years we have begun to take a much more considered look at diversity, equity and inclusion and what this means to Carnegie UK. In line with recognition in the sector, we realise we need to reassess our organisational culture.

Carnegie UK exists to promote wellbeing for all. To achieve wellbeing, both within our organisation, and outside, we need:

To be inclusive in enabling everyone to have a voice.
To understand that different people, groups and communities have differing priorities for wellbeing and seek to hear about what matters to them.
To grapple with achieving equity and support people who have traditionally been discriminated against to swim in the centre of the shoal.

We recognise we need to challenge ourselves more. In the next year, we are going to be working with our strategic learning partner, who will support us to act on our intentions to become more diverse and to include diverse individuals in internal, and wider policy, decision-making.

Where are we starting from?

To see where we currently are in this process and to act as our baseline for future comparison, in December 2021 we ran an amended version of the Association of Charitable Foundations survey with our board of trustees and staff team^[2]. This exercise asks you to self-assess your organisation with regard to investing time and resources in understanding diversity, and advocating for diversity, equity and inclusion externally.

It was the first time we have done such an exercise across the whole organisation and board. We had a 75% response rate, and think if in the future we kept the survey open for longer we’d have more responses. We discussed the results in focused sessions with the board and staff teams. In the spirit of our values of promoting change and being challenging to ourselves and others, we are sharing some of the findings, alongside reflections from one of the Carnegie UK trustees who participated in the process.

What did the results say?

Overall, the top line was clear – we’re out of the starting blocks but still have a long road ahead of us for activities to improve diversity, equity and inclusion to be our everyday practice and organisational culture. We saw repeated references across the survey to ideas and activities being tested, trialled, or used sporadically but not to systemic or embedded change.

A key learning for us was around awareness of activities. We saw a number of references in the written data that individuals were not confident of knowing what we were doing in a space. Given we are only a small organisation, this in itself, raised a clear signal that much of our work to date could still be considered siloed. However, responses also demonstrated keenness to continue, learn and to keep moving forward with this agenda.

Reflecting on where we are in the journey

When we look at the specific results, we can see that staff and trustees feel we have made greatest progress in creating time and resources for the issues. In a sense this is reassuring as this is what we have been focused at doing particularly with the staff team over the past year. Trying to create these spaces and open up opportunities for dialogue.

Breaking down the data, the staff team were more likely to say we’re “just getting started” or “not yet considered” on activities than our trustees. We think this is linked to the fact the team have had more space than the Board to discuss diversity issues, so have a more informed sense of the extent and scale of the challenge ahead.

The opening of learning in the staff team has lead to thoughts about how much work needs to be done. we are also beginning to benchmark ourselves against others in the sector who we are trying to learn from.

As one respondent said:

“We’ve started conversations; put it in our OD Plan; recognise this is important for us; appointed a Learning Partner; talking to other orgs – but the more we explore, the more we realise we have to learn.”

Monitoring change and collecting data

Looking at the results about some of our internal practises, we found we are at the earliest point in terms of our data collection. In addition to commentary around needing to do more in this space, there were ideas around building on what we have already to make it more effective.

“We have had a track record of being transparent and need to build on that with a DEI focus”

Some of the open responses spoke to more questions than answers at this stage, and whether we are all talking about or understanding the same thing. One of those raised was of proportionality. For an organisation of less than 20 staff what are the additional considerations around data collection and particularly anonymity when you have such a small sample?

The survey highlighted possible areas of change in the diversity of our board and staff group and around broader HR policies and how we are constituted. As one person said we are now,

“..asking the questions, new norms not yet in place – and exactly how much needs to change not yet clear”

Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in our external work

We weren’t agreed as an organisation about what we have done and what needs to change in terms of using our power to advocate and collaborate for equity and inclusion. The open responses highlighted the need for more learning and discussion across the organisation.

“Some of the staff team do this – but again we could do much more, particularly around platform raising and using the power we have already to influence change.”

Open responses around our external activities also pointed to specific organisational developments. Others picked up specific programme examples we could learn from that may be using more inclusive or advanced practice that should be shared as they were not mainstream within the organisation yet.

View from The Board

At the start of the 2022 five year strategy, we embarked on a new learning journey to put DEI at the heart of all we do as an organisation, Independent Trust and as an employer. Instinctively we knew it was the right thing to do but do we really understand what this all means? – I think for most of us trustees the answer to that was “no “?

We recognise that we needed to listen hard, be open to learn and especially wholeheartedly sign up to the creative conversations we needed to have to arrive at a shared understanding of what each of these three words truly mean and avoid jumping on yet another potential bandwagon.

The word that personally I grappled with most was equity (as opposed to the more familiar terminology of equality) And finally inclusion which all to often focuses on who is left out rather than why and how to bring them in. For all three words the nuances of the semantics mean so much more than their apparent definitions.

Teasing this all out, learning by doing using the ACF framework as a guide and looking forward to having external partners to steer us through the maze that lies ahead, is both exciting and scary at the same time! This is the best possible combination of factors to ensure we make the change and influence others to truly understand where we are and where we need to be.

Working closely with staff has been a highlight of the work to date and the external stimulus we will all receive from our new partners will be invaluable – the grit in the oyster! We are committed to investing time and resources to understanding, defining, delivering and most of all practising what we preach and sharing our experiences widely and proactively with others . We are at the start of a long journey looking not just at what we do but why, how and with whom.

Final reflections

The staff team and board recognise this journey won’t follow a linear path. It is about culture change with no fixed end point. We need to challenge ourselves more and, plenty of difficult discussions and decisions lie ahead. What we all share is the determination to understand what DEI truly means by listening, doing and being over the next five years.

Get in touch

We hope to keep you informed about what we learn about DEI and ourselves as an organisation along our journey. If you have ideas of how we could do what we seek to do better, or have any examples of best practice you’d like to share, please do share them with us ([email protected]). We would genuinely love to hear from you.

[1] The exercise asks you to self-assess your organisation with regard investing time and resources in understanding diversity, and advocating for diversity, equity and inclusion externally. For each question there is rating 1 to 5 (“Not yet considered” to “Fully embedded”) and a box for comments about why you have given that score.

^[2] As we are not a grant making organisation we updated the wording of a couple of the questions to make them more relevant to our activities.

Where are we on the journey to liberation?

“We’ve started conversations; put it in our OD Plan; recognise this is important for us; appointed a Learning Partner; talking to other orgs – but the more we explore, the more we realise we have to learn.”

“We have had a track record of being transparent and need to build on that with a DEI focus”

“..asking the questions, new norms not yet in place – and exactly how much needs to change not yet clear”

“Some of the staff team do this – but again we could do much more, particularly around platform raising and using the power we have already to influence change.”