Holly Donagh, Director of Strategic Learning, Insight and Influence, reflects on our experience to date and shares our learning which might be useful for others embarking on this work.
It is two years since we published our commitment to being anti-racist and to embedding the principles of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) more deeply into everything we do at the Foundation.
Since then we have published annual progress reports on our action plan and had some moments of reflection (such as a blog written by colleagues for Alliance magazine on Uprooting Racism in Grant-making, and our annual review for 2021/22 ) but we thought it would be useful to share a bit more on where we are now and offer some thoughts for those embarking on similar processes.
As the Director of Strategic Learning, Insight and Influence I have a particular interest in how we learn and how we can collaborate and exchange ideas. I’ve picked out a few themes and reflected on what might be useful for others. But I want to stress this has not come from a formal evaluation process and is to a large extent ‘my take’ which will be partial and coloured by my own positionality and interests. The question of how best to audit our progress (with a level of objectivity, but not a hugely capacity-hungry process) is something we are still thinking about and an area where we would really welcome the thoughts of peers.
One of the most significant pieces of work that we’ve undertaken since we made our commitment in 2020 was working with a learning partner. We commissioned consultants to help us between February to September 2021. Through this process we asked all staff and trustees to share their experiences of working in the Foundation, and we worked through a programme of online learning sessions with a specific focus on race and tackling racism. We felt that this process would be a pre-condition for effective grant-making in the context of social justice.
Reflecting on this part of our learning I would say I have mixed feelings. And I frame this by saying this is not about the work of our consultants but my own sense of what I missed, our preparedness for the process and the challenges I observe in doing this work. We didn’t do enough to support staff and we also found it really hard to sustain a single track of learning for all staff and trustees. It was particularly hard for our staff of colour who engaged positively with the process but too often found it bruising and demoralising. Personally, I feel I underestimated the weight of this process on colleagues (of all backgrounds), pulling in the personal, political and professional into one space and I’m sure that at least in part that reflects my blind spots as a white senior leader.
The process did push everyone to engage in a different way and have conversations that we may have shied away from in the past, it kick started our thinking about learning and unlearning and has helped to normalise the conversation about race and racism within our leadership (which is largely white).
Reflections for other partners who might be planning something similar;
There is a really strong commitment to learning at PHF, and many of the sessions we have led, whether for all staff or in smaller teams, have been resonant and formed important steps in moving us forward. However, we do recognise the tendency to think that learning alone will ‘fix’ the challenges of institutional blind-spots and, as one of our staff members memorably said: “you can’t read your way out of racism”. As we go forward we are trying to be intentional in our learning, thoughtful about who should do what learning and mindful that just because we have been exposed to an idea it doesn’t necessarily mean we have learnt or that we all have the same understanding. I would really encourage others to undertake a learning programme but with these thoughts in mind.
We’ve replaced what was a broad advisory DEI group made up of staff from across the organisation with a task-focussed group which combines staff and trustees working together to determine and prioritise key areas for more action. One of the challenges we’ve had is in how to manage and keep track of what has become a long list of actions, how to communicate progress and maintain awareness across all staff and trustees and ensure nothing falls between the cracks. We know we need more capacity to help do this but we are also clear that this is not one person’s job and the accountability and responsibility has to be shared and particularly centred in the leadership team and the board.
We have moved to six board meetings a year from four, to allow for more learning at board level and more oversight of our practice.
Forming a group of staff and trustees focussed on delivery has been new for PHF and required each member of the group to play a slightly different role to the one they normally play. We want this group to model inclusive and non-hierarchical ways of working and this is both exciting and hard. We are still in the early days of this work, and we will be able to share more later.
All of our grant teams have their own objectives and plans in respect of anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion which are tailored to their contexts. Across all grant-making we have focussed on improving our data and have audited all our grants for the second time using the Funders for Race Equality Alliance audit. The audit shows that where we have intentionally prioritised communities and people who have historically been under-funded, we have been able to change the pattern of our grant-making. We’ve also supported the Foundation Practice Ratings work which is a really useful new tool.
We still have a way to go to bring-in feedback in a consistent way to our processes and ensure that we don’t become a closed loop. We have been undertaking a review of our Backbone funding which is a strategic invitation only fund – this has raised really important issues about the tension of this way of working in this ‘invitation-only’ way and our equity ambitions. It’s also raised the question of how best our staff can engage the organisations we fund in helpful and appropriate discussions about their diversity, equity and inclusion practice and what support we could and should be giving.
For some of our staff and trustees the process of moving forward and embedding our commitment to this work has been too slow, for others it has moved on from certain issues or conversations too quickly and we have not had the time and space to constructively disagree or go deeper. I think this goes to the heart of how as managers we conceptualise culture change, what it looks like and what we think we need to do to drive it – whether that is directing and steering or letting go and helping things to flourish by other means.
I’m wary of ending by coming back to the idea of the journey – this is definitely a cliché! – but I do feel we’ve made some progress over the last two years that all our staff and trustees can be proud of and it is their commitment and belief that has made it happen. But we do of course have much further to go. There is joy in aiming for a future where everyone can feel real liberation, and as an organisation with resources and wide-ranging networks it is exciting to consider what more we can do to help bring this about.
I’d welcome thoughts and ideas from our colleagues who have been very generous in sharing their expertise without us throughout. You can get in touch with us at DEI@phf.org.uk
Ruth Pryce, Head of Programme – Young People, and Sarah Eberhardt, Evidence and Learning Analyst, reflect on the results of our latest racial justice audit.
Holly Donagh, Director of Strategic Learning, Insight and Influence, reflects on the Foundation Practice Rating, which seeks to improve diversity, accountability and transparency across the sector.
