Polite, posh and problematic: inside our sector’s class problem
Podcast transcript
Transcript: Polite, posh and problematic: inside our sector’s class problem
Podcast description
The charity sector is there to serve society’s most marginalised, so why do we see so few of them either at the helm or on the Board? In this episode, we confront the For Impact sector’s greatest taboo: its uncomfortable relationship with class. Who holds the power, who is silenced, and why your accent still seems to matter. Is the sector ready to face its own class problem? We speak with Dorothea Jones, Alex Evans and Duncan Exley to find out the answers.
“It felt almost completely out of reach. Almost like you had, middle class saviours coming in, do-gooding and going back out again. That’s what it felt like. I think with working class kids, that perception is why that needs to change, particularly from the top.”
Dorothea Jones is an inclusion strategist, ADHD UK Ambassador and founder of Inclusivation, a consultancy dedicated to building inclusive workplace cultures across industries.
“The Charity Commission’s job really isn’t about protecting the public. It’s also about keeping charity politically safe for the wealthy and making sure that any voices for change aren’t really heard.”
Alex Evans, Charity Consultant and Researcher
“They have limited headspace. So if funders and trustees aren’t saying we should attend to inclusion, they’re effectively saying we shouldn’t. And I think a lot of that comes from the demographics of the funders and trustees themselves – you look at the data there, and they’re not from a representative range of backgrounds. They look around and they think these people look normal to me, as humans we tend to overestimate our own normality, because we’re surrounded by people who look like themselves.”
Duncan Exley
Our hosts
Felicia Willow, aka the Mary Poppins of the Charity Sector, is a seasoned interim CEO and consultant in the Charity Sector, working primarily on strategy, governance, crisis and effectiveness. Her leadership roles include the Fawcett Society and the Shannon Trust. A lawyer by training, Felicia’s career has spanned government, UN and the UK charity sector (the ‘For Impact’ sector) and she finds herself increasingly focussed on discussing and challenging the systemic issues that are holding the sector back.
Chris Pitt is responsible for positive social and environmental impact at Benefact Group, a family of specialist financial services businesses owned by a charitable Trust. The Group is the 3rd largest corporate giver to charity1 and Chris oversees over £2m of giving, namely through the Movement for Good awards which give small donations to a huge diversity of causes and large grants to charities close to the customers and communities of the Group.
1 DSC – The guide to UK Company Giving 2023-24
Our guests
Dorothea Jones Dorothea Jones is an inclusion strategist, ADHD UK Ambassador and founder of Inclusivation, a consultancy dedicated to building inclusive workplace cultures across industries. She is also the co-founder of Rebound & Rise, a UN UK Women Participant (CSW68 & CSW69) and holds and MA in Violence Against Women.
Raised on a North West London council estate and diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, Dorothea brings both lived experience and leadership to her work. She previously led on hate crime for the Mayor of London and was the first woman co-director of The Monitoring Group, the UK’s longest running anti-racist charity. She was also headhunted to lead a gender and race audit into the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Dorothea now works with business leaders to embed intersectional inclusion, social mobility and neurodiversity into every level of the employee experience, creatingenvironments where everyone feels seen, heard and valued.
Alex Evans
Alex Evans is a charity consultant and researcher with 25 years’ experience across UK civil society, supporting charities, funders, and community organisations. A former academic, he combines hands-on consultancy with his critical writing project Barely Civil Society, which challenges orthodoxies in the sector and explores the politics of charity, funding, and class.
Duncan Exley
Duncan Exley works with nonprofits to recruit, reach & unleash the potential of people from a larger & more representative range of socioeconomic backgrounds; using review-&-recommendation consultancy & training. Duncan’s research on the underrepresentation of – & barriers facing – people from ‘lower’ socioeconomic groups in the charity sector, commissioned by the EY Foundation, is available here. He is the author of “The End of Aspiration? Social Mobility & our children’s fading prospects”. Duncan grew up in a yorkshire ‘pit village’, entered the sector as a Membership Development Assistant and later became CEO of the Equality Trust.
Resources
EY Foundation Social Mobility in the Charity Sector
Follow Alex Evans’ Barely Civil Society here
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