Charities need more diversity of thought, finance leaders told

23 May 2018 News

Lynne Berry

Charities need to improve diversity at all levels and become more welcoming to people from outside of the sector, an audience of charity finance leaders heard this morning.

Speaking at Charity Finance Group’s Annual Conference today, Lynne Berry, who is chair of Breast Cancer Now and Sustrans, said charities needed to work harder to include people “who are very different to us”.

She said: “In the press at the moment there is a lot of discussion about diversity. I think that it is really important to look at where we get trustees from, where we get staff from, where our volunteers come from, who we work with, and there are things we can do about it and we can learn from other sectors to do it and do it well.

“But the hardest part of diversity is really thinking about diversity of thought. That is something that we all can and should be doing and be bringing in to our organisations and including people who think very differently.

“I know again there are a number of initiatives underway and I very much welcome those but diversity isn’t just about replacing, to use that old phrase, old white male, stale people. It is actually about welcoming far more, far broader, far different people into our sector.”

Empowering stakeholders

Berry, who received the Daniel Phelan Award for Outstanding Acheivement at Civil Society Media's Charity Awards last year, also said charities needed to improve in their efforts to empower their beneficiaries.

She said: “I think we are all too frequently guilty of disempowering others. I think the real challenge is to change the discourse.”

Berry said charities needed to work to empower their “volunteers, the staff, the trustees, the main stakeholders, but most of all those the organisation is there to serve”.

She said: “We are still after many years of co-production, service users rights, the voice of the consumer, not very good at doing that.

“We need to be because we are very good at criticising other organisations and other sectors for not being good and if we are going to criticise others and work in partnership with them we have got to demonstrate that we actually can take this seriously ourselves.”

 

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