Organisations led by Black and Ethnic Minority communities need long-term, scaled and flexible funding to fight racial injustice in the UK, according to a report.
The report, Digging Deeper: Insights on tailored funding to organisations led by Black people and communities experiencing racial injustice in 2020, commissioned by The Baobab Foundation looks at the state of funding for Black and Ethnic Minority community organisations and says more needs to be done to address institutional racism and structural inequalities within funding systems.
It notes that the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests led to a surge in funding, however, states this support did not give sufficient attention to directly addressing racial injustice and structural inequalities.
The Baobab Foundation is calling for funders to commit to providing large-scale, sustained and flexible funding to organisations led by and for Black people and communities experiencing racial injustice in the UK.
'Funders need to acknowledge that the needs of a community are not singular'
The report reveals that many BME-led community organisations remain in a “precarious” position as their funding is tied to Covid-19 work.
The report also revealed that hyper-marginalised groups such as Black disabled people, Roma, gypsy and traveller people, women and trans people were under-represented and under-served by the funding made available, and continued to experience marginalisation within funding systems.
“Funders need to acknowledge that the needs of a community are not singular. The needs of specific groups need to be framed more broadly than they currently are,” the report states.
Some respondents said that BME-led organisations needed fairer treatment by funders believing they were more likely to be treated differently or their needs not understood, and stated communities impacted by racial injustice continue to have to navigate systems that they may believe do not serve them.
One issue raised was the failure of many funder’s to be explicit about race and racism in their emerging funding programmes, “and a perception that this topic is still avoided in dialogue with funders, preferring to focus on the wider remit of diversity and inclusion as the focus of their response.”
This report places the burden of responsibility on funding organisations to address these issues.
This will include building trauma-informed practice into grantmaking and looking at where policies, practices, behaviours and processes could reproduce harm for people living and working within the context of ongoing oppression and trauma.
Jake Ferguson, founder of Baobab and chief executive of Hackney CVS, said: “Now more than ever we need to find ways to provide long-term support to Black communities experiencing racial injustice. Our ambition is to provide scaled and long-term commitment to investing in organisations led by and for Black and Ethnic Minority communities in the UK. We look forward to a brighter future and working with charitable and corporate funders to realise our ambition of a fairer society.”
Related articles
