Charity Bank has signed the Diversity Forum Manifesto
Charity Bank has signed the Diversity Forum’s Manifesto 2.0 as part of its commitment to improve equity, diversity and inclusion, both in the bank’s operations as well as the wider social investment sector.
What is the Diversity Forum?
The Diversity Forum emerged out of important discussions held at The Gathering of UK social investors in 2017 about the need to improve diversity in the sector. Since then, the Forum has grown to encompass sector-wide initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion among social investors in the UK; this includes the Diversity Champions network, commissioning research and recently publishing their revised Manifesto.
It was the Diversity Forum’s pioneering report in 2019 that became one of the first studies in the UK to document the worrying lack of diversity in the UK social investment sector. Since then, they have continued to work with the sector to address this issue, most recently with the launch of their revised Manifesto to hold organisations accountable for their EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) goals.
Identifying the lack of diversity
In 2017, Big Society Capital and the Social Impact Investors Group joined together to conduct a rapid survey on diversity and equality. This survey formed a baseline for a comparative study the following year as part of the Diversity Forum’s 2019 Inclusive Social Investment Sector Report, completed by Inclusive Boards.
The results showed that diversity had not improved since 2017 and in many instances had decreased. The report found that there was a lack of diverse representation across the ethnicity, gender, disability, and socioeconomic backgrounds of those working within social investment.
Findings from this research suggested that the social investment sector may not be recruiting or retaining the best people for the work they are undertaking and indicated that a lack of diverse representation can influence how finance is allocated.