Our approach to ringfencing a minimum of 25% of our funding for Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities

As an independent charitable trust, we are committed to ensuring that our funding portfolio is both distributed equitably and helps to address the needs of communities across England and Wales.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen a range of evidence highlighting how the pandemic has disproportionately affected Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. This is on top of the structural inequalities already present in our society. This is also present across the 11 complex social issues we fund such as homelessness, domestic abuse and criminal justice which disproportionately affect minoritised communities and are less well served by mainstream provision.

Our research and experience has also shown that charities led by the people they seek to serve are better able to reach and meet the complex needs of their communities. Their lived experience means they have a better understanding of their communities and how to support them.

Despite the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on minoritised communities, and the structural inequalities present in our society as well as the importance of lived experience in effectively serving these communities, Black, Asian and minority ethnic led charities are under funded and have been for many years. Many of these organisations came into the pandemic in a precarious financial position and nine out of ten risked closing entirely.

It is our responsibility as a funder to ensure that our funding goes to the charities best placed to serve the needs of communities across England and Wales. That is why we fund small and local charities rooted in their communities and with a track record of helping people on a journey of positive change. It’s also why we set out our equity, diversity and inclusion strategy in 2019 to ensure that we work towards tackling inequality in all aspects of our work.

To understand the diversity of our grants portfolio and ensure it meets the commitments we have set, we analysed past applications to our funds using the assessment framework of the Funders Alliance on Race Equality and found that applications from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic led organisations had lower approval rates overall (26%) even when compared to white led organisations working with minoritised communities, which had similar application success rates as the wider applications we receive (35% and 38% respectively).

In designing our funding we consulted others including Charity So White to ensure that we created a programme that would seek to meet the needs of communities particularly those who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic while also ensuring to make our funding portfolio much more equitable.

That is why we have ring fenced at least 25% of our funds to charities that are led by and who serve Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.