How Austerity Exposes The Racial Injustice of The Charity Sector
By Khadijah Anabah, with contributions from two charity sector workers who prefer to remain anonymous.
Although many in the sector were optimistic following Labour’s victory, recent statements by Rachel Reeves suggest that we may soon be heading towards austerity 2.0. In addition to this, Lisa Nandy has stated that charities are to become the ‘centre of national life’. As evidenced by the last 14 years under Tory Austerity, economic crises tend to increase public reliance on charities, especially when those who require support from the state are turned away.
Austerity policies also create a sense of scarcity among charitable organisations, as reduced funding substantially impacts competition for resources and grants. Unsurprisingly, larger, more resource-rich organisations are more likely to win grants during these times of funding scarcity. During austerity, many already under-resourced charitable organisations primarily serving marginalised communities will receive significantly less funding, and many will potentially collapse.
Racial Capitalism in The Charity Sector
When crises like this hit, the significance of racial capitalism within the sector becomes an unavoidable reality that we must reconcile if we want to embody what it means to be committed anti-racists. Racial capitalism, as an analysis, forces us to unpack the interwoven nature of economics and racial injustice. It makes it necessary for us to question the impact of financial crises on racial disparities and the value assigned to various forms of labour. In our sector, this form of analysis is severely lacking.
However, there is some research we can explore that evidences the significance of race and its interaction with economics and power. In a study conducted by ACEVO 2018, only 9% of charity employees were from “BAME” backgrounds, and this figure was significantly reduced within leadership positions. Furthermore, Taken on Trust, the Charity Commission’s 2017 research into board effectiveness found that 92% of all charity trustees were white, and only 9.6% of trustees in the top 100 charities by income were from “BAME” backgrounds. These figures are alarming in evidencing the distribution of representation within the charity sector, which can tell us how power and decision-making can be understood on racial lines.
Whilst representation in the distribution of leadership and workers is important, funding remains an essential feature of disparity. As highlighted by Equally Ours, only 5% of funding within the sector is received by organisations serving racially marginalised populations. These organisations primarily serve communities who, as evidenced by the Runnymede Trust report on the racial wealth gap in Britain, already suffer under the strain of economic deprivation.
The economic structure of the charity sector has been built on economic injustice, also known as capitalist extraction. When we explore the role race plays within this structure, it becomes unavoidable to witness its significance in further entrenching unequal wealth distribution in the same sector that claims to exist to alleviate inequality. While the financial crisis has and will affect all charity sector workers, those at the bottom of the hierarchy, those in frontline positions providing direct support, are hit the hardest. Suppose the sector wants to challenge injustice and support those who are more likely to face a concentration of deprivation. In that case, it needs to transform its economic systems, not replicate the same systems that cause deprivation.
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) or Racialised Emotional Labour?
Historically, when the case for unequal distribution of power and finances in the sector is critiqued, the response is “equality, diversity, and inclusion,” as if this is the solution to all our woes. So, let's explore that a little bit.
Audre Lorde states, "The master's tool will never dismantle the master's house." So, how can we expect a capitalist economic system to be dismantled through the capitalist endeavour of EDI in charities? EDI has become yet another weapon in the sector's arsenal of tools used to maintain its allegiance to white supremacy and capitalist extraction.
The concept is further exacerbated by the expectation that racially marginalised workers in the charity sector take on the racialised emotional labour of EDI initiatives in addition to their responsibilities, often without remuneration or recognition of the skills and trauma required to perform these roles. This racialised emotional labour can be viewed in a multifaceted way, but just to give you a few examples, it may look like this:
Performing niceness in fear of being perceived as “too aggressive.”
Being positioned as responsible for educating colleagues about racism.
Sharing your lived experience of racial trauma in an attempt to humanise yourself and your community to your colleagues and senior leadership.
Being the go-to person to sign off on whether something is “culturally appropriate.”
Being expected to “share your culture” whilst colleagues umm and ahh voyeuristically.
If you and anyone you know have experienced the above, you may be entitled to compensation. No, not really, because much of this work is undervalued and unrecognised as real work (we can thank capitalism for that). Instead of recognising the way racialised emotional labour adds to the extraction many racially marginalised people already face, we are made to feel that if we do not champion this work, then it is our fault that racism still plagues our organisations. The communities we care about are underserved. Organisations are committed to offering as little as possible regarding repair and regeneration, which are vital things that could transform our society. It is no surprise why many leave the sector burnt-out and traumatised by their experiences.
What Could Austerity 2.0 do to the Charity Sector?
If we look at how the private sector has responded to the economic crisis, we may see what might be in store for the charity sector. It would be unsurprising to witness charity organisations begin to regress, a mindset of greater scarcity thrive, commitments made to racial justice decline, and many redundancies due to “efficiency’ become the calling card. Scarcity will create greater competition, and charity monopolies where large organisations thrive whilst smaller grassroots organisations decline will become the expected norm. And what about leadership? The status quo will continue, i.e. the overrepresentation of White upper and middle-class people in leadership positions. Pathways that were created for racially marginalised people, which many have deemed necessary for ‘greater representation’ in leadership, will more than likely decrease or cease to exist.
This may sound like an uncharitable, somewhat pessimistic prediction, but nothing I've mentioned here is new or novel; it is just how the sector has been functioning.
The way forward
Organisations can only navigate the financial crisis of austerity 2.0 through radical transformation. This transformation must involve transparency, accountability, and economic and racial justice that goes beyond EDI training. If the sector wishes to break free from the allegations of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, it needs to transform.
If we are finally honest about the problems of racism and extractivism, we can start dealing with it. We also need to start seriously exposing how the sector's insistence on mirroring private industry’s profit-focused economic model creates an infinite loop to justifying its existence. Particularly larger organisations sustained by the extractive labour systems that have made a commodity out of the overworking and under-resourcing of its employees.
As this crisis looms, many of the larger organisations will be fine, and many, if not all, of the Leaders who make up the sector will be protected, as they have been for as long as history remembers. The same cannot be said for historically marginalised staff who will be the first to be impacted by this crisis, whether through job loss, resource depletion, or the responsibility of continuing to pretend that racial justice has ever been taken seriously in the sector.
For those in the sector grounded in liberation politics, now is an excellent time to think about how we build and sustain alternatives. The financial precarity that comes with an economic crisis can be traumatic. While healing from these traumas is imperative for survival, it is also time to be more imaginative. We need to mobilise and organise more than ever in a manner focused on regenerative work systems and community building. We have inherent value, skills, knowledge and expertise, and we can no longer afford to wait for organisations to change; they want to tell us to stay in the lanes they've created for us, but we can build whole new roads for ourselves.
