The RACE to improve racial diversity – how do environmental charities measure up?

4 Feb

As part of our ongoing commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, Opportunity Green has joined the RACE Report initiative, the UK’s largest analysis of the racial diversity of the environmental charity and funder sector. During UK’s Race Equality Week, we look at the findings, reflect on actions we have taken so far at Opportunity Green, and what more we can do based on our results.

RACE stands for Racial Action for the Climate Emergency. The initiative was launched by a group of environmental nonprofit organisations in the UK in April 2022, inspired by a similar initiative in the United States called Green 2.0. The annual RACE report aims to improve transparency by collecting and analysing anonymised racial diversity data from participating organisations.

Information is collected across several categories:

Administration and organisation characteristics.
Race and ethnicity data for staff and governance bodies (where applicable).
Information on policy, strategy and action on diversity and inclusion.
New in 2024: intersectional data focusing on age, disability and gender.

Findings from the 2024 RACE Report

The third annual RACE Report published this week shows a growing interest and commitment to action on racial diversity among organisations within the environmental nonprofit sector, with a record number of 161 organisations submitting data. This represents over 28,600 employees in the sector.

Despite this positive increase in participation, the report highlights how racial diversity in the environmental nonprofit sector remains significantly lower than the UK working population, with 4.5% of employees identifying as people of colour and other racially or ethnically minoritised groups, compared with 16% of the UK working population. Interestingly, smaller organisations (10-49 employees) appear to have more diversity among their employees with 14.1% of staff identifying as people of colour and other racially or ethnically minoritised groups, compared to 1.8% of employees in larger organisations (500-1,000 employees).

The data also suggests that organisations with more fully implemented actions promoting equality, diversity and inclusion have a higher racial diversity. This highlights just how important it is for workplaces to take action and shows there is potential for change to improve our sector’s inclusivity.  

How is Opportunity Green taking action on racial diversity?

At Opportunity Green, we believe that climate change is a race issue and a gender issue, but we also know that diverse experiences and perspectives are not adequately represented in climate policy and the non-profit space we work in. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment with a range of progressive policies and practices focused on supporting our team.

Early on, the staff at Opportunity Green formed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee focused on making an inclusive and progressive workplace for all. Some of the actions we have taken to date include:

Writing and regularly updating our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy.
Using Applied to debias the recruitment process.
Not requiring degree-level qualifications for the majority of roles.
Creating an application guide to support candidates with clear guidance and encourage anyone to come forward with requests for any adjustments to the process.
Signing up to the RACE report 2024 data collection and commitment to action based on our assessment from it.
Engaging with the 10,000 Interns Foundation program for non-white graduates.

While we’re proud of the progress we have achieved so far, we know there is more that we could do. Opportunity Green’s Transparency Card from this year’s report shows clearly the areas where we have not implemented any or enough actions to date, such as strategy and targets. While some of the actions listed are intended to be prioritised by larger organisations, the card offers us a great starting point for further work.

We will continue to engage critically with racial diversity. Our initial focus will be on the areas marked as ‘not yet implemented’ in the Card, to help guide future action to improve our workplace practices, making sure we are truly inclusive and representative of all sections of society. Keep an eye out for updates on our progress in the coming months!

You can read the full 2024 RACE report and take part in personal action to engage with race quality in the workplace during this Race Equality Week.