Progressing our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy

A focus on improving Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within Buttle UK is a key part of our 2020-25 strategy at Buttle UK. Our EDI strategy can be read here and it specifically sets out to improve on the three areas set out below:

1. We will become inclusive by instinct and represent the communities we aim to support
2. Improve the access and experience of children and young people that could benefit from our grants
3. Hold ourselves to account and share our EDI challenges and achievements with others.

Below highlights what we have achieved in these areas so far and what we are planning to achieve in our 2023-24 Business Plan as well. 

1. We will become inclusive by instinct and represent the communities we aim to support Staff and the majority of Trustees have attended EDI training. We have also carried out Equality Impact Training and ‘All about Race’ recruitment training (for SMT), disability, unconscious bias, and LGBTQ+ training for the staff team. These have been ‘one off’ sessions so far and our training programme needs to be developed to include support for new starters within our induction process. A review of our induction process is in our HR plans for the 2023-24 financial year.

Our EDI strategy highlights how critical a diverse team is to deliver the best for the communities we support. We have carried out a skills and diversity audit for our Trustee Board and included these results on our website here. We have recently recruited for new trustees and intend to update this and, if possible, share the diversity of our staff team in the same way. We have also improved our application processes for candidates, providing a full recruitment pack with details including salary, the role, benefits, flexible working, and support to attend interviews if needed. We also anonymise applications for our shortlisting process and include young people on all of our trustee/staff recruitment interviews to ensure a diverse panel of stakeholders.

Our new staff benefits package has been created with inclusion at their heart, this is highlighted in all our job packs and on the recruitment page when we have roles advertised. Staff are consulted and involved in major decisions regarding the benefits we offer and, whilst this is a package that we are proud of, we know that there is always more that can be done and learning from others that we can take.

2. Improve the access and experience of children and young people that could benefit from our grants – This goal closely aligns with the work we are doing within our co-production and accountability focus of our strategy, building a Youth Panel and Advisory Network to engage with our staff and Trustees regarding our decision-making in our organisation. The Youth Panel have supported us in a number of organisational projects, and are currently preparing for a discussion with our trustee board regarding how our endowment is invested. In addition, we have improved our grants application to provide greater demographic information on the children and families we support, so that we can improve the diversity of our grantmaking where necessary. We analyse geographic data already and for the first time, our impact report this year shows the national and regional breakdown of our grant giving by ethnicity as well.

3. Holding ourselves to account and sharing our EDI challenges and achievements with others – Overall, our focus has largely been on the first two elements of the strategy as we build our own knowledge and review improvements we can make internally. As this continues, we will begin to share our learning and work with other organisations to further collective change in the grant-making sector, particularly for organisations that support individuals. We have however begun to share our updated Trustee/Staff recruitment packs and process with other grantmaking organisations, set up an EDI Working Group with other CEO members of the Association of Charitable Organisations (ACO) and have presented on our Trustee recruitment process in a webinar led by Action for Trustee Racial Diversity. Our CEO has also led the first webinar for the ACO EDI Working Group on the strength of diverse charity boards featuring CEOs and trustees from Family Fund, Buttle UK and the British Dental Association Benevolent Fund.