The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC) collaborated with The Pocressi Initiative (TPI) on an action research project, supporting charities and social enterprises working in the addictions and criminal justice sectors to apply a diversity and inclusion lens to their organisations.

This included:

What we learnt throughout the DEI support journey

  • Sector: The sector of the charity didn’t make such a big difference as to how engaged they were.
  • Geography: They were spread out geographically across England, and while the importance of race was initially questioned by some, we were able to demonstrate relevance through examining their local data.
  • Size: 4 out of 5 charities were small charities (under a million-pound turnover), and despite what may be commonly expected – that small charities have less capacity to focus on DEI – there was no difference between the big charity and the other small charities in terms of their uptake of our support and progress on DEI. While small charities may be more resource-constrained, larger charities also move slightly slower, so size didn’t seem to be a major barrier for charities to embark on DEI.

The first step of supporting the charities was to conduct the diagnostic. We came up with this to ensure it covered the breadth and depth of an audit, while bearing in mind the limited capacity of many organisations.

The second step was to support the charities to develop an action plan and guide them through it. Our projected time frame (six months) became difficult to manage – looking back, we should have been clearer on expectations, time limits and boundaries.

Read the full article about funding diversity, equity, and inclusion work by Bonnie Chiu and Lily Lewis at Alliance Magazine.