Senior management teams and boards make slow progress on diversity, study finds

A survey by Third Sector of 50 leading fundraising charities finds slight improvements in diversity over the past three years

Major charities have made progress on ethnic and gender diversity at senior levels in recent years but have some way to go if the sector is to be truly representative, research by Third Sector shows.

A survey of 50 leading fundraising charities has found that senior management teams and trustee boards are slightly more ethnically diverse and have a marginally fairer gender split than when Third Sector conducted the same exercise three years ago.

But voluntary sector figures said that, despite the progress, significant work was still needed on both gender and ethnic diversity at top levels.

The research found that the proportion of female senior managers among the 50 charities had increased from 44 per cent in 2014 to 47 per cent this year, and the proportion of female trustees had increased from 36 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period.

The proportion of female chief executives increased from 30 to 32 per cent over the past three years, but this was only in effect one additional female chief executive since the previous survey was carried out.

The proportion of non-white senor managers increased from 6 per cent in 2014 to 10 per cent this year and the percentage of non-white trustees went from 8 to 10 per cent over the same period.

The figures on ethnic diversity compare poorly with the most recent UK census, which found that 14 per cent of UK residents were non-white, although that figure varied considerably from region to region.

In London, where most of the charities in Third Sector’s sample are based and which is the most ethnically diverse region in the UK, 40 per cent of people were found to be non-white.

For the full data and for comment and analysis, read the full article here.

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Diversity is the sector’s Achilles’ heel, says fundraising consultant

Carol Akiwumi tells the Institute of Fundraising’s annual convention that charities must stop doing the same old, same old with the usual suspects

The lack of diversity in the charity sector is “an embarrassment” and an “Achilles’ heel”, according to the fundraising trainer and consultant Carol Akiwumi.

Speaking at the Institute of Fundraising’s annual convention yesterday, Akiwumi said increasing diversity would help the sector face the challenges of the future with the help of different perspectives.

She was speaking at a panel session exploring what the “next big thing” in fundraising and the sector as a whole was likely to be.

“My idea for the next big thing is diversity,” she said. “At the moment it’s an embarrassment, an Achilles’ heel.

“The world is changing and the sector must keep up. That means getting past doing the same old, same old with the usual suspects.”

If charities really wanted to find new ways of doing things in order to raise funds and achieve their objects they would have to increase diversity, said Akiwumi.

“There are all those people who have such amazing ideas and who could help us by giving us alternative views,” she said.

“Because if the people who are closest to you are all like you, you have blind spots. All of us have unconscious biases – that’s why we need a 360-degree view.”

She challenged delegates to “get out of your comfort zone” and implement effective diversity strategies in order to find ways of “getting comfortable” with new and different perspectives and ideas.

“Dare to dream bigger,” Akiwumi said. “Dare to imagine that you can harness not just the ideas from the places that you would be uncomfortable with, but whole communities. We can actually begin to reach communities that we don’t traditionally target in our campaigns.”

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