The charity leaders body Acevo has launched an anti-racism tool to encourage “deep thinking, bold conversations and practical steps toward progress”. 

The Anti-Racism Companion Journal, which Acevo describes as a “personal tool for positive change”, distills key insights from the body’s Race Equity Series, part of the Home Truths 2 project.

Acevo said each part of the series covers an important area of practice to support civil society in solving its ongoing racism problem, including recorded sessions with keynote speakers, written Q&As with anti-racist practitioners and a guide to practical action.

The Anti-Racism Companion, which is open-source and available to read and download from the Acevo website, includes a list of key terms, deep dives into anti-racist approaches and spaces for leaders to reflect on their own experiences and personal actions they can take.

The companion urges leaders to use it as they wish, saying: “Journalling can help when reflecting on challenges and opportunities in your own personal practice and that of your organisation. It can create space and provide perspective on a problem and unblock action.

“You can input directly into this journal or in some other format somewhere else. You could draw or write or record reflections through voice notes or videos. You may benefit from discussing reflections with a trusted peer.”

The companion discusses the limits of focusing solely on boosting diversity, saying: “We need to fix what lies beneath the diversity deficit in the first place: namely civil society’s racism problem.”

Instead, the companion urges different approaches to address underlying issues of racism, including anti-racism and race equity.

It says organisations aiming to deliver anti-racism and race equity “own their complicity in racism and acknowledge their shortcomings”, as well as supporting and being guided by people inside the organisation who may experience racism.

It adds that organisations striving to embed race equity and anti-racism will also institutionally root anti-racist and race equity behaviours, for example, by tying them to the organisation’s purpose and working in a mission-centred way.

The companion also highlights the importance of understanding intersectionality, discussing how power is shaped by multiple overlapping ideologies including racism, classism and misogyny – resulting in some people facing “multiple interacting layers of harm”.

It also discusses ethnic pay disparities, saying that civil society has lagged in its publication of ethnicity pay gap data, with just 27 of the top 100 charities by income reporting these figures in 2022. 

“The data published reveals an ethnic pay gap of 22 per cent – meaning that if the average white worker earned £25,000 a year, their average Black or Minoritised Ethnic counterpart would earn just £19,500.”

It also gives advice on how to calculate the ethnicity pay gap within an organisation.

The companion also offers advice on dealing with reports of racism within an organisation, saying: “In too many cases the institution finds it hard to hear the uncomfortable truth. It can shake the belief in civil society that it is home to those who ‘do good’.”

But the companion says that instead of reacting with denial and attacking the credibility and intentions of those who raise a concern about racism, organisations can take positive action towards acceptance, such as by engaging outside agencies to investigate or creating channels for anonymous reporting.

It says: “Systems and processes are critical to developing humane responses to reports of racism within organisations. 

“But these systems will only be created and will only thrive within organisations willing to resist the temptation to deflect and instead hold themselves accountable in cases of racism.”