At the Barrow Cadbury Trust we believe in the equal value of all people. This fundamental belief drives everything we do. We recognise that people are discriminated against at many levels due to disrespect of their identities, heritage or characteristics. We understand that this is profoundly damaging to individuals, to groups and to society at large. It is also compounded by discrimination over more than one characteristic, such as race, gender, age or income for example. Discrimination takes many forms including violent hate crime, deliberate and overt discriminatory behaviour, actions due to institutional or organisational structures and culture and unconscious bias at the individual level.

We know and understand that no individual or organisation is immune from this and that it takes deliberation, self- examination and continuous effort to become less discriminatory and more inclusive, both at the personal and at the organisational level.

Power and privilege play out in all areas of our lives from the macro to the micro. We believe in the broad and positive benefits of better DEI practice – to productivity, to individuals and to society itself. We will be brave and transparent in speaking out about these issues.

Our board and staff pledge ourselves to examine our own power and privilege, not forgetting the discrimination experienced by any of us as well, with the intention to detoxify damaging behaviours, structures and attitudes. We will take a ‘whole organisation’ approach to improvement, building on areas of work we have already engaged in. This means looking more closely than ever before at all aspects of our organisation, its work and its heritage, including historic injustice.

We will critically examine further our governance, management, communications, internal operations, relationships with our partners, our programmatic work and our financial base (in our case an endowment).

We will draw up an annual action plan on DEI, seek and be open to challenge and feedback and transparent in our reporting on progress, both internally and externally.

Recognising that culture drives change more surely than does strategy, we will build on our existing organisational culture, ensuring that all voices can be listened to and heard as we move forward.

Action plan 2025-26

The action plan has been edited to use more positive language as discussed by Trustees:

Governance

• Use the Association of Charitable Foundations’ ‘Good Foundations’ framework as a tool to audit our practice on an annual basis

• Ensure all Trustees have access to further learning on DEI issues by a variety of means

• Review our anti-racist approach in each of our programmes and the Trust as a whole as part of our annual review and planning cycle.

• Review diversity, skills and experience gaps each time a vacancy arises at Board level

Management/internal operations

• Provide on-going learning and reflection sessions to the staff team to deepen our understanding and practice of diversity, equity and inclusion

• Publish our gender and race pay gaps annually

• Audit our staff diversity and take action to improve it when opportunities arise so that our team increasingly reflects those we aim to benefit though our programmes

• Review our supply chains and switch to more DEI-friendly suppliers where possible

Communications

• Ensure that our websites and publications reflect and promote our commitment to DEI

• Through our personal interactions and communications, actively promote our DEI approach

• Use plain English in all our communications, avoiding acronyms and jargon in our internal and external publications and other materials

• Use transparent, straightforward and accessible application guidance and processes are

Relationships with partners

• Demonstrate awareness of the impact of the power that we have in funding relationships; maintain open, honest and respectful relationships which value what each party brings to our shared goals.

• Be open to challenge and feedback on our behaviours where they fall short, without being defensive

• Participate in networks for learning and sharing good practice

Programmes

• Use the Funders for Race Equality audit tool to review our grant portfolios annually, and publish our results and any actions we take to improve our impact

• Continue to use DEI-lens in all our grant assessments and awards and that all funded partners explain the DEI implications of what they are trying to achieve

• Ensure that work on all our programmes is informed by the input of people with lived experience of the issues being tackled by the programme. Where those people are not acting in their own paid employment role, we compensate them for their time

• Ensure diversity in the panels of any events we run or pay for and work to attract diverse audiences. Monitor that diversity and adapt our communications and activities as needed to improve it.

Finances

• Continue raising awareness of DEI issues with other investors and investment managers.

• Improve our DEI reporting on social investments and include in 2025 Social Investment Impact report.

• Take part in government consultation on Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

• Continue support for Good Work Coalition, including company engagement on Ethnicity Pay Gap reporting and Living Wage.