The Smallwood Trust has focused its EDI strategy on four key areas:

1. Grant-making and external partnerships
The Smallwood Trust has developed a gender-lens grant-making framework that takes an intersectional approach to grant-making and includes outcome goals such as system transformation, supporting partners to take a gender-lens approach, flexible funding, and supporting networks and communities to be more resilient.

The Trust has invested £2.1 million in place-based initiatives in four cities and re-funded existing Community Grant Partners (CGPs) to a value of £2.7 million over three years.

Our Gendered Poverty Learning Programme (GPLP), funded by the National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF), offers a huge potential to develop our approaches around what works in terms of shifting power and being more accountable to the communities we fund. Click here for more information.

The Trust has also made changes to our grant-making processes to make them more inclusive and we are committed to closing the gap in funding for organisations led by Black, Asian, and minoritised women.

2. Board development, governance and accountability
The Smallwood Trust won the ‘Managing Turnaround’ category of the Charity Governance Awards for our approach to governance, which gave substantive and consistent consideration to beneficiaries. The Trust adopted the Charity Governance Code and created a Governance Action Plan to set clear milestones in relation to organisational purpose, EDI, openness, and accountability.

The Board approved the continuation of the successful Shadowing Programme for the next two years and established an EDI Sub-Committee to take this work forward. The Board also considered delivery vs strategic impact, taking a flexible approach vs risk management, and shifting power to the communities it serves. The EDI sub-group will consider each of the Charity Governance Code principles through an EDI lens.

3. Staffing and internal culture
The Smallwood Trust has appointed an external HR Adviser to help the CEO invest in the organisation’s culture, knowledge, systems, and skills and build our own capability to deliver on our plans. The Trust has also reviewed and updated our recruitment process, job description and person specification for new staff roles through an EDI lens and engaged an inclusive recruitment agency.

Additionally, we have designed tailored workshops for staff that addressed the beginning of their EDI journey, offered 1 to 1 coaching to staff on matters related to EDI, and engaged staff in EDI conversations by providing safe spaces. The Trust is implementing a new People Strategy and developing a Code of Conduct/Anti Bullying policy using an EDI impact assessment framework.

4. Historical investments
At the time of writing, further research has been undertaken into our historical investments building on previous research. The Board will be considering next steps and will be agreeing a timetable to publish the research. The learning from this research will be harnessed as a further impetus to shift power across all of our work.