EDI Commitment
Fundraising Everywhere was created out of a need for inclusive events in the charity sector.
Through the power of virtual we could provide affordable and accessible learning opportunities for fundraisers everywhere, and connect speakers and learners together in a community that welcomed people as they were from wherever they are.
From day one, equity and inclusiveness has been top of our priority and we weave it through all we do, and ensuring we incorporate non-visible and visible diversity in our events – equality, diversity and inclusion is always part of our initial planning and never an afterthought.
How We Do It
EDI is weaved into everything and we’re careful not to reduce our community to a statistic for concern of virtue signalling. However, we know this isn’t helpful for being open about our work or being held accountable for what we commit to.
We hope to get the balance right and welcome feedback, and to keep you updated here’s what we’ve been working on since 2019:
- Involvement from speakers with visible and non-visible disabilities, people of colour, and an equal gender split for all self-curated events
- Our FE partners include representatives of LGBTQI+, disability, socioeconomic, race, religion, and age/experience
- We created and hosted the first fundraising conference for people of colour (BAME Online), working with a paid black fundraiser and handing all event creative and delivery control over to their expertise. IP of this event was transferred free of charge to JMB consulting in 2021. We remain involved as a sponsor giving our virtual event platform for free
- Specialised events are ‘pay what you can’ to ensure access for all and profit is paid to speakers and/or donated to the charities affected
- Over €50,000 donated to charities and €55,000+ to speakers from events in 2020
- We pay all of our speakers. Our current flat fee is €150 for a 40min session
- Launched ‘Accessibility Talks’, a series created and hosted by a fundraiser with disabilities to address the specific needs of people with disabilities in the charity sector
- All events are subtitled
- Free places for small charities (<€100kpa) for select events
- We partner with organisations to provide bursaries for those with little to no training budget
- We provide discounts for charities who want access to events for their whole team
- We always show the salary and don’t ask for qualifications when advertising roles
In 2021 we’re working with an independent consultant who will review our EDI activity and develop a report for further recommendations.
Our Continued Work
Prior to the EDI review recommendations we’ve committed to the following improvements in 2021.
- Increase speaker pay to €250 per 1hr session (achieved March 2021!)
- Launch inclusive speaker data collection survey (achieved January 2021)
- Ensure event representation of 19% speakers with disabilities* (including non-visible)
- Ensure event representation of 14% people of colour**
- Ensure event representation of 4% speakers who identify as LGBTQ+***
- Ensure fair representation (50/50) of gender, including non-binary and trans speakers
- Work with external experts on improved visual and audio accessibility for events and embed into our own work and contributions from partners and speakers e.g. slides, website, audio, subtitles
- Undergo training for inclusive promotion (language, timing, location, format) and train all partners when joining FE
- Hold ourselves and curator partners accountable to our ‘Speaker and Event Policy‘
*as taken from UK population from Scope
**as taken from UK population from Gov.UK
***as taken from UK population from Office of National Statistics
Although we are a global organisation founded in Ireland, the largest number of our audience comes from the UK. As our community grows we will monitor and adapt the above numbers.
Event & Speaker Policy
As a virtual event platform and community we’re committed to being fair, equitable, diverse and inclusive in our events, conferences, and sessions.
We do this by holding ourselves and our event partners accountable to the following actions:
- Adhere to and seek to improve on the goals set in our EDI Commitment.
- We commit to being meaningfully inclusive across all parts of our events and work with partners and speakers to weave this into their contribution: this includes curation, promotion, event content, and event delivery.
- We collect and monitor speaker demographics and take relevant action if we recognise we’re not providing the representation to which we’re committed.
- We work with, and pay, professionals with more experience than us in specialist areas.
- Our speakers are diverse: we curate events before approaching speakers and commit to a speaker rosta at every event that is diverse in visible and nonvisible diversity.
- We have a continuously open speaker submission process to widen our access to talented speakers.
- Our panels will never be all white or all male: any panel with 4+ speakers should have at least one person who identifies as woman, non-binary or genderfluid, and at least one panellist should be a person of colour. Women and people of colour should not be limited to moderating roles.
- When people from marginalised backgrounds are included in our events it is not solely to talk about their identity unless relevant to the event or topic: ideally conversations about diversity should not be siloed into single sessions but addressed through all sessions.
- We budget for, provide and clearly publicise financial support for speakers and attendees.
- We curate events with ample lead time to allow speakers the opportunity to participate if they need to make personal adjustments to accept their invitation.
- We ensure an accessible, inclusive and welcoming space by providing subtitles, providing flexible recording and attendee opportunities, and make pronouns visible.
- We support speakers who may need additional support with participation by promoting and making available access to longer session times, additional methods of participation (audio or short-form only) or working with interpreters.
- Free places are available to small charities and all of our events are priced with affordability and accessibility in mind.
- Specialist events that tackle inequality will be ‘pay what you can’.
- We remain open to feedback, questions and conversations. We continue to learn and acknowledge we must always work to be better.
With thanks to OpenNews for providing the initial template for adaptations.
