Equality Diversity Inclusion

Dismantling racism in charity retail: A statement of commitment

We are the lead body in charity retail, with some 80% of the UK’s charity shops in membership. As such, we believe we have a moral duty to tackle racism in all its forms within the sector, and to give our members appropriate guidance, training and encouragement to excise racism from their activities.

We recognise that there is a problem of race inequality in society and our sector, and this impacts on our staff, our volunteers and the communities we are here to serve.

Far too many of the senior roles within our sector are held by white people, and there has been a real lack of opportunity for individuals from an ethnic minority background to begin, develop and succeed in their careers in the voluntary sector whether as paid staff or volunteers.

Systemic racism and discrimination in the UK directly and indirectly leads to poorer life chances, deeper health inequalities and greater risks being carried within ethnic minority communities, and those challenges are exacerbated when our sector fails to address its own problems of race inequality.

While many of our members have campaigned and fought for race equality and social justice over many years, collectively we have not done enough to create the real changes that are needed to achieve true racial equality in our work.

We know that words alone are nowhere near enough. But we also know that silence amongst leaders, especially white leaders, in our sector causes pain for our colleagues and our communities. We know that people from ethnic minority communities are tired of hearing worthy words and seeing no action, and that fundamental change is required before progress can be made – “tinkering around the edges” is not going to be effective.

We are therefore publishing our first action plan which we hope will go some way towards redressing the inequalities and lack of opportunities for people from an ethnic minority background which exist within charity retail. We recognise that fulfilling this plan will take determination, planning, energy and resource. It is not the role of a single organisation of course, and we will need to work closely with our members to achieve the desired results, but we are committed to working as quickly and effectively as possible to achieve measurable change.

We commit to being open and accountable as we progress this work. We will report publicly on progress against our plan – with honesty about the things that don’t happen as well as those that do.

As a board and as a staff team we commit ourselves to move forward together, to listen and to learn, to take action jointly and individually, to effect change and to be held accountable for delivering change.

We know we have much more to do. For the sake of our sector and our communities, charities and social change organisations are #NeverMoreNeeded, and we need to get this right.

Charity Retail Association, July 2020

Action plan

Set up

Building the foundations

Training and learning

Board and governance

Ongoing CRA conversations

External actions