Charities need to commit to inclusion if they want to diversify their trustee boards, said two BME charity directors in Islington at a panel discussion hosted by business volunteering charity the BIG Alliance last week.
This call for action follows a report by Inclusive Boards in 2018 which showed that ethnic diversity on the boards of the largest charities was worse than in the UK’s biggest companies.
6.6% of trustees at the top five hundred charities being from ethnic minority backgrounds, compared to 8.2% among FTSE 100 companies.
Colin Adams MBE, director of Hanley Crouch Community Association and a trustee of Help on your Doorstep, said that organisations needed to answer the question: “how inclusive are you, in terms of people you want to come to your organisation?”
He urged trustee boards to check the language they use, and make sure they can connect with people’s backgrounds. “We can roll out the word diversity but we need to make sure we are actually challenging this – and making sure there is actually inclusivity.”
Halaleh Taheri, founder and executive director of the Middle Eastern Women and Society Organisation, said that the glass ceiling “is everywhere… but when it comes to BME communities, it is thicker,” and that organisations need to appeal more to young girls and women in minority communities.
