The Foundation focuses on where the need exists and works to improve the well-being of individuals, families, and groups across our society. We do this by making grants to Global Charities that support diverse groups and communities including people who are experiencing discrimination due to their race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability, and other forms of bias.
We are committed to inclusion in our society. We will continue to pursue this by finding more ways to overcome exclusion and disadvantage, reviewing our accessibility, and being proactive. We include a broad range of factors that are important to our work and our understanding of the issues affecting society – these include lived experience and social and economic background and we recognize that diversity is not always visible or immediately evident.
The Foundation has the following active principles and ways of working to support our ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and will continue to embed these across all areas of our work, both our internal and external facing activities and in our wider relationships.
Principles:
- We are accessible and straightforward – giving clear and consistent guidance to applicants and grantees, helping them to present their best case regardless of background or
- We maintain a transparent approach to our grant-making with grants published online on a regular basis, all grants listed individually in our annual report and case studies to visibly highlight the breadth of our support across the Globe for those who may not have applied
- We strive to continuously learn and improve – we question and educate ourselves to be as well informed as possible about the issues and challenges that individuals and communities deal with on a daily We continue to learn from our charity partners.
- We ensure our staff team is diverse throughout the organization, including at the senior and managerial levels, to allow multiple perspectives to thrive and inform our
- We actively encourage debate and discussion so that wide-ranging experiences and factors are taken into consideration when reviewing applications
Actions we are taking:
- Staff and Trustees are committed to inclusion, and discussion on DEI is continuous to ensure our commitment is embedded on a daily basis, not just as a set of written
- We commissioned an external DEI consultancy to review all our documentation, correspondence, and communication and continuously make improvements to be accessible and to account for new learning and standards as they
- We work with external specialists for staff and Board training to address important areas such as unconscious bias and to inform ourselves of key issues relating to our
- DEI is embedded in both our key documents and our practice, for example, our Dream Forward Charter which sets out our commitment to
- We ask applicants to supply demographic information about their beneficiaries so we can monitor the Foundation’s reach with marginalized
- We ask applicants what patterns of inequality, exclusion, or marginalization they have identified in the context of their work and what they are doing to tackle This helps us to understand how our charity partners are achieving diversity.
- We highly value the diversity of our staff Half the team is the first generation in their families to attend university. A third of staff at the managerial level is from a BAME background and, overall, this proportion is 38% across the whole team. Our team draws on wide-ranging life experiences and knowledge which is a source of understanding, inspiration, and enjoyment.
- We have appointed a DEI champion within the organization who has the knowledge and lived experience of DEI issues.