One month on: Our open letter on emergency funding
In line with #CharitySoWhite’s commitment and policy on transparency and accountability, below is a briefing from the meetings and engagements with infrastructure and funding organisations regarding our open letter which urges funders involved in emergency response funding to take the following action:
Ensure that there are at least two individuals on steering or oversight groups for funding set up who have a significant track record of championing race equality in funding.
Ensure 20% of funding is ring-fenced for BAME VCS Groups, managed directly by BAME Infrastructure organisations.
Responses have been varied and whilst we are encouraged by funders openness to hearing from different perspectives, we encountered a range of problematic power dynamics including many who are early on in their journey of understanding structural racism and learning and acknowledging the power they hold.
This document is a summary of engagement with:
National Emergency Trust (CEO & Head of Distribution)
National Lottery Community Fund (CEO & Deputy Directors)
UK Community Foundations (CEO)
Comic Relief (Investment and Funding team)
NCVO (CEO & Director of Policy and Volunteering)
Association of Charitable Foundations (CEO & Head of Policy)
Chartered Institute of Fundraising (CEO & Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion)
ACEVO (CEO & Head of Policy)
We have pressed and highlighted key issues and concerns with the emergency response, including:
Actions to date are not matching urgency of the situation, with 9/10 BAME VCS organisations set to close in the next 3 months.
Surface level action such as better marketing of funds will not suffice. In the long term issues of power and trust need to be addressed, in the immediate response we call for ringfencing and decision making led by BAME infrastructure to deal with these issues.
The importance of monitoring where funds are going through race equality data - specifically looking at leadership & governance, whether funds are going to BAME-led organisations, not just organisations claiming to work with these communities.
National Emergency Trust (NET):
We met with NET on 24th April and 1st May. NET shared that they were themselves concerned and working on a plan to ensure equitable distribution of emergency funds that considers lessons learnt from previous crises like the Grenfell Tower Tragedy. They said that whilst they had not ruled out ring fencing, they could not support our call until they had better evidence on where their funds were currently going. They said their own early analysis raised concerns that funds were not reaching BAME communities but could not share any concrete figures at this point. They said as a next step they were setting up an EDI Advisory Group to which they shared the terms of reference and asked #CharitySoWhite to make two nominations for members.
Whilst it is encouraging to see the commitment and intention from NET, we do not believe it is matched with urgent enough action. We believe that by the time they gather what they deem ‘enough evidence’ it will be too late to take necessary action. We raised concerns about UKCF’s (their main distribution partner) track record and commitment to race equity in funding, including sharing our analysis of Oxford Community Foundation’s funding track record in 2020 which shows only 2.66% of funds went to BAME-led organisations. We emphasised any further evidence collection needed to be based on leadership and governance of grantees, not just service users. We further shared concerns about plans for their EDI group which did not have any real decision making power or influence and would be co-chaired by the CEO of UKCF, a clear conflict of interest. We declined making any nominations until these issues were resolved.
We asked NET to urgently sign our open letter, engage with BAME infrastructure organisations as an additional distribution partner and provide clear accountability and transparency on funds being distributed through UKCF.
The National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF):
We met with NLCF on 24th April and 6th May, the latter was part of a wider meeting with BAME infrastructure groups and NLCF’s CEO.
At our initial meeting we raised to NLCF our serious concerns about their track record in funding distribution, with our analysis of largest 50 grants in London in 2019 showing only 7.74% of funds went to BAME led organisations. In response they said they could not find enough BAME led organisations to fund. We raised that this was a problem of structural racism in their own policies and processes which stems from a lack of reach and trust in BAME VCS groups.
At the second meeting NLCF agreed they are concerned about their ability to reach BAME VCS groups and said they will need the help of BAME infrastructure organisations to do so. They have said that although they recognise BAME communities are disproportionately impacted by the crisis, they do not support targets or ring fencing of funds to ensure support reaches them. When asked what a successful equitable emergency funding response will look like to them if they will not set targets or introduce ring fencing they were not able to articulate a clear alternative.
We challenged that partnering with BAME infrastructure organisations and providing funding for surface level work such as marketing / signposting is not enough. NLCF need to take action that matches the years of underfunding that it has been complicit in and the trust it has eroded with BAME VCS groups. Any partnership with BAME infrastructure will need to be underpinned by ring fenced funds to make funding commitments clear and give direct decision making power on allocation of funds to these infrastructure groups. We also challenged their monitoring of where funding is going and that they needed to monitor and publicly report on proportions going to BAME-led organisations.
In the second meeting a number of other topics including funding for BAME infrastructure organisations and long term investment in BAME VCS groups and communities were discussed. It was agreed further meetings were needed to explore these properly.
UK Community Foundations
The only correspendence has been via email after our request to meet them was not met. In response to our open letter they stated that they were aware the BAME communities had been disproportionately affected. They said they were working with Muslim Charities Forum and Small Charities Coalition to raise awareness of their funds amongst BAME charities and would monitor the service users supported by their funding. They said they could not influence local community foundations, for example to ensure representative grants panels.
We are deeply concerned with the little action and commitment that UKCF has taken to ensure race equity in the distribution of funds through their networks and their attempts to distance themselves from the power they hold. We would encourage them to meet with our organising team to discuss the calls in our open letter.
Comic Relief:
Comic Relief reached out to us, requesting a meeting prior to Big Night In. We met with them on 24th April and 5th May and have had positive conversations.
During the first meeting, they acknowledged the power they hold and the need to do more to support BAME-led organisations working with BAME communities. They were hoping to work with us to address that. Following our first meeting, they took the asks in our open letter to their department leadership team within the same week.
During the second meeting, they relayed progress so far which we will be able to share shortly.
We encourage Comic Relief to push forward positive discussions to concrete commitments and actions in line with the two calls in our open letter.
National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO):
We met with NCVO on 4th May to discuss the calls in our open letter and highlight our concern that NCVO was not doing enough to support BAME VCS and communities who are being disproportionately impacted by the crisis. NCVO said despite a recommendation from their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion group to sign our letter, they would not be a signatory. They said they recognise that BAME communities are disproportionately impacted by the crisis but cannot support ringfencing when they had some members who were not receiving any relief funding from the government. They say they have been working with government and other sector leaders to highlight issues of equality and diversity.
We said that not enough action had been taken and that discussions and decision making on emergency funding lacked transparency and accountability. We asked NCVO to reconsider their position on ring fencing and sign our letter in line with advice from their internal EDI group. We also asked them to urgently externally communicate a clearer action plan for how they would specifically ensure racial equity in the emergency response and that this was particularly pertinent if they did not support our open letter.
We lend our solidarity and support to NCVO’s BAME network and EDI group at this difficult time.
Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF)
We met with ACF on 16th April to discuss our open letter and ask for their support as a signatory. ACF believes their role in the current state of things is to encourage foundations to continue to spend, to improve their processes specifically by promoting the London Funders pledge, and to facilitate collaborations. In regard to our call for action, they believe their work with the DEI pillars covers the issue of racial inequality during the crisis and the disproportionate impact it has on BAME communities but that they cannot advise foundations to ring fence and will instead promote application of the pillars.
Although we applaud ACF’s successes in getting some of their members to diversify their boards and highlighting the importance of DEI in the sector, we strongly believe their response is lacking in urgency. We asked ACF to reconsider their position as not only do we believe that a recommendation to ring fence is in line with their DEI pillars, but that it matches the urgency of the situation where the adoption of some pillars will not be possible within the next 3 months in which it is predicted that 9/10 BAME VCS organisations will close.
We further highlighted a number of concerns that we encouraged them to take back to their members regarding the dropping equalities monitoring and a number of BAME VCS groups reporting a lack of adherence to London Funders principles from funders who had signed them.
Chartered Institute of Fundraising (IoF)
IoF was one of the first major infrastructure organisations to sign our letter. Their CEO Peter Lewis sets out why they did in this blog, acknowledging that the BAME voluntary sector has historically been underfunded and highlighting the problematic behaviours of large charities saying they will meet the needs of particular communities without knowledge or expertise to do so.
He stated that ‘We have an opportunity now, in the funding that is made available to the sector, whether for emergency relief, recovery or renewal, to begin to redress that balance, and to begin to right some of those injustices.’
Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO):
From the beginning, ACEVO were in complete agreement on the need for race equality expertise but expressed uncertainty about ringfencing. Our meeting on 17 April with them mainly focused on why ringfencing of funds are needed in the emergency response. After a discussion on this and the disproportionate impact of the crisis on BAME communities and the consistent underfunding of BAME groups by funders ACEVO joined the list of signatories. We have written up more details on some of the questions we have had about ringfencing in an FAQ here.
In a blog post later published by ACEVO, CEO Vicky Browning stated:
‘There are other specialist, community led civil society organisations supporting other disproportionately impacted groups which also need support. Signing up to #CharitySoWhite’s requests does not negate this, but refusing to sign up to it on the basis that others are in need is just a form of ‘whataboutery.’ BAME led voluntary groups are also a wide ranging group of charities and many will be dealing with intersections of need, for example mental health, disability, gender equality and socio-economic status.’
