RACIAL JUSTICE AUDIT 2022
Our Audit
This work comes out of our second aim, which seeks to increase sustainable and flexible funding for Black and Minoritised-led organisations.
One of our key objectives is to increase sustainable and flexible funding for Black and Minortised-led organisations. To achieve this, we've designed a racial justice audit tool to enable funders to:
Identify how much funding is reaching Black and Minoritised communities and addresses racial justice work*
Produce a snapshot of current portfolios and create a baseline to track funding on a yearly basis
Implement targets and strategies to ensure funders are advancing racial justice work
Allow greater transparency of current foundation expenditure
In 2021/2022, we continued to build on the learning of previous cohorts, strengthening our resource to drive change to funder practice and transform the picture of UK racial justice grant-making.
15 of our members submitted data on 1003 grants awarded between 1st July 2021 and 1st August 2022, with a total of £85.1m. These organisations represented a mix of large, small, specialist and generalist UK funders (see below for full list).
Our Findings
Of the total amount audited, 46% went on projects to benefit communities with experience of racial injustice.
Of those funds, 13% was awarded to organisations whose mission and purpose was to support a specific community (e.g. Asian/Asian British) and 87% to those supporting people from Black and Minoritised communities more generally.
It’s worth noting that, of the organisations with a stated mission and purpose to support Black and Minoritised communities, only just over a quarter were also led by Black and Minoritised individuals.
Looking at organisations targeting a particular ethnicity (e.g. Asian/Asian British) rather than Black and Minoritised communities more generally, we found that less than 2% of organisations both targeted a particular ethnicity and were led by people sharing that ethnicity.
The largest proportion of funding (63%) went on service provision, followed by core/unrestricted funding (11%), campaigning/influencing (9%) and research/policy (6%).
Looking at the grants intended to benefit communities with experience of racial injustice, just over a quarter (26%) were designed to address the root causes of racial injustice, just over a third (36%) the effects of it. The remainder were either not targeting injustice, or it was unclear.
The story behind the data
Our second and third audits were during the peak as well as the aftermath of Covid-19 and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter (BLM). This was around the time the race equality sector made a call to funders to make a commitment to the longer-term funding of their work and wider sector.
In comparison to cohort 1 and 2, there has been an increase in funding to organisations who are working to benefit communities who have experienced racial injustice. However, the vast majority of the increased funding has gone to larger, generalist race equality organisations, with seemingly minimal increase in funding to organisations who have been structurally underfunded and continue to be so.
The overall level of funding going to organisations whose mission and purpose is to support communities experiencing racial injustice has increased considerably from 9.78% to 30.82% in the audits carried out over the previous two years.
The purpose of the funding has also shifted, with a greater focus on the underlying root causes, but service provision still takes up the majority of funding in this space, giving a further indication of the kinds of organisations who have seen an increase in funding.
We changed the definition of ‘led-by’ to be a higher bar than previously (now at 75% or more).** Despite that, there was a significant reported increase in the proportion of organisations who were ‘led-by’, from 6.3% to 28.4%. Even accounting for over-reporting, this indicates a substantial uptick.
There has been an increase in the level of funding to organisations tackling the root causes (up from 4.27% to 25.5%).
16 funders submitted details of 1,003 grants with a total value of £85.1m, approximately 5% of the 39,780 grants with a value of £1.7bn recorded by 360Giving.
DATA RESULTS
Mission and purpose to support a specific community
Of those grants which benefit communities experiencing racial injustice, less than one sixth went to benefit specific communities, the vast majority went to work without a specific community purpose.
Not a specific ethnic group 55.83%
Communities experiencing racial injustice 30.82%
Other group experiencing ethnic or racial injustice 8.22%
Asian/Asian British 2.68%
Black/African/Caribbean/Black British 2.44%
% of grantee organisations led by people experiencing racial injustice
A quarter of funding went to organisations whose leadership came from communities experiencing racial injustice. Most of the leadership was mixed heritage, but just under 5% went to organisations whose leadership was Black /African/Caribbean/Black British, and just over 2% went to organisations whose leadership was Asian/Asian British.
True 24.20%
False 75.80%
Type of project
Two thirds of funding went on service provision, with the remaining third split between core funding, campaigning, capacity building and research/policy work.
Service provision 63.26%
Core/unrestricted funding 11.36%
Campaigning/influencing 8.75%
Research/policy 5.82%
Capacity building- organisations 4.35%
Capacity building- individuals 4.16%
Other 1.26%
Community cohesion/understanding 1%
Capital projects 0.03%
Our Message
We urge all members of the Alliance and wider philanthropic sector to complete our audit, at least every two years. In 2020/1, funders acknowledged the underinvestment of the race equality sector and made a commitment to do better. We believe that grant-makers have taken a short-term approach to making this a reality, as shown in our research.
Our audit is a key step to increasing more targeted and sustainable funding. We encourage funders to act on their data. With your board, look at the information you collect, how you interpret it, and what is missing. Address any assumptions you may have and monitor your progress against your strategic aims to increase funding.
We’re not saying this will be easy. But this is how we stay committed. This is change.
We will be looking to analyse our cohorts in greater depth to inform funders of the fuller picture over 3 years; a period in which we experienced Covid-19, Black Lives Matter and rising cost of living.
If you’re a funder, and would like to complete the Audit for the next cohort, email us!
Clarifications
No individual funder data is published in the Alliance’s findings.
Our audit takes into account approximately the same number (but lower value) of grants as was covered in the two previous audits combined, but with a substantially larger number of foundations.
*We understand and recognise that there can be differing views on terminology and how best to discuss the race equality agenda. “Black and Minoritised” was the language chosen when the tool was initially developed in 2019 after consulting race equality campaigners and advocates in order to ensure consistency with the sector. However, we are conscious of the evolution of language, identity and limitations of these terms, as well as the sensitivities and complexities involved. We endeavour to constantly review this language for future work.
**The criteria used to classify a Black and Minoritised-led organisation required that organisations have both a mission and purpose to benefit Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and the majority of their leadership (at 75% of the senior team and the Trustee board) are from the Minoritised community(ies) the organisation serves.
***We corrected this graph 01/11/2022 due to an error made in the analysis. We had previously reported 1.42% of organisations were led by people with lived experience. This was incorrect, and the true figure is 11.38%