Getting to grips with EDI

Governance of charities matters and when it goes wrong it can go horribly wrong!

Some of you might remember the story of the trustee in the Isle of Wight who murdered another trustee, apparently over a difference of opinion about matters relating to the charity. 

Now, I am not for one moment suggesting poor governance results in murder  – although I suspect some of us have harboured hostile thoughts to fellow trustees – but poor governance definitely affects the ability of a charity to serve its beneficiaries and service users effectively.

My organisation, the Directory of Social Change (DSC) has been working with boards of charities for decades on governance performance. A few years ago, with support from a number of funders, we designed a free online confidential questionnaire for trustees and executives to complete on how well they thought their board performed on the areas outlined in the excellent Governance Code.

The Governance App

The Governance App, as we call it, takes trustees through the seven key areas of the code and asks 10 core questions under each area. The purpose is to get boards to think about and discuss where they do well, where they do less well, where the points of difference lie and what actions they planned to take to improve.

Over 4,000 individuals have completed the questionnaire and earlier this year we extrapolated the data from around 1,200 of them to see what it was telling us.

I’m not going to take you through the detail of the report. Overall, boards aren’t doing too badly in most areas – as you can see in the graphic below. But, as you can also see, one area leaps out where boards feel they hugely underperform.

The section with the lowest overall scores, the biggest gap between high and low scores, and the area with the biggest variance in scores between small and larger organisations is in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). 

Lack of confidence and understanding

Notwithstanding the fact that these results broadly reflect what we see across all charities in our sector, the question remains, why is it such an issue?

It may partly be because EDI is a recent addition to the governance code – only included from 2020 – so you could argue that boards have had less time to get to grips with it than other areas such as ‘openness and accountability’, ‘integrity’ etc.

Further there are no statutory reporting elements on EDI (as there are around risk reporting or financial viability) so they’re not embedded in ongoing governance cycles.

But I suspect it’s just as much the fact that EDI is an area where not just boards, but many people, lack confidence and understanding. Because it can feel sensitive to tackle, many boards often avoid discussing performance in this area for fear of getting it wrong or unleashing responses they are unsure how to handle.

This is perhaps a reflection of other data which show that boards are still typically white, male and of a particular socio-economic background. So it may be that either they are unaware of the issues, or they lack the confidence to address them as they are from an advantaged demographic.

On wobbly ground

Boards struggle to identify what they mean by EDI.

Is it about diversity of all sorts of skills and experience? Is it overwhelmingly about anti-racism? Is it about feminism? Is it about age or demographics? Is it about educational background? How much does the actual composition of senior staff matter? How much does representation on boards matter? And why? Which issues are symbolic, and which really matter to our beneficiaries and stakeholders?

Because it’s an area where boards feel on wobbly ground, they sometimes assume they have to spend vast amounts of charity money on specialised consultants. They are reluctant to open this expensive bag of worms so it’s easier just to not address it.

All these reasons are understandable – but not an excuse. The world expects more from charities now, in particular when it comes to anti-racism and inclusion work.

Start the conversation

But it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. If you can afford it, getting external help is definitely worth it. Even if you can’t, that’s no reason to not start having the conversations and identifying what you can do to be more inclusive.

My advice is to start by assuming you haven’t nailed EDI and then have a discussion with your board, staff and volunteers about what kind of organisation you want to be. Then identify the actions to get you there – which might include things like changing your recruitment processes, getting someone in to train you, buying a book on unconscious bias, setting up a working group and so on.

And do use our app. It’s free to use, anonymous and comes with checklists and guidance to help you to have the sorts of discussions you need to move your charity forward, in all governance areas, not just EDI.

The important thing is taking the first step of acknowledging there is work to be done. You don’t have to come to blows!