Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in our events
We are committed to promoting diversity and equality in all our activities in order to engender inclusive processes, practices and culture at the Institute and across all our work. This includes our events and communications.
We believe that including more diversity in our events brings a wider range of perspectives to our discussions and gives a voice to those who have less opportunity to be heard.
We are committed to making a positive impact on diversity and inclusion internally, as well as within the impact investment community, and more widely.
We want the Institute to be a place where everyone – from any background – can do their best work to make a difference.
We therefore commit to taking the following actions to improve diversity and inclusion in events at the Institute, and in which we are involved:
Internal events
- Apply a ‘comply or explain’ approach for each event we host or co-host regarding the diversity balance of the speakers.
- Comply:
- A minimum of 1 woman/non-binary representative and/or 1 black and ethnic minority representative on panels of 2 or less, including the moderator.
- A minimum of 2 women/non-binary representatives and/or 2 black and ethnic minority representatives and/or 1 representative from each group mentioned, on panels of 3 or more, including the moderator.
- Larger events: Where possible, 50/50 split of women/non-binary representation and/or black and ethnic minority representation, including moderators.
- Comply:
- Explain (if unable to comply): record the limitations which meant it was not possible to meet the comply criteria
- Have a zero-tolerance approach to any unlawful or unfair discrimination including direct or indirect discrimination, discrimination by association, discrimination linked to a perceived characteristic, harassment and victimisation at our events.
- Participate in 1 event per year with a focus on diversity and inclusion.
- Maintain a list of diverse speakers who we are able to approach to participate at our events and/or represent the Institute at external events.
- Measure and report annually on speaker and attendee diversity statistics for all internal or co-hosted events.
- Take into consideration the accessibility of events held in-person or digitally by ensuring disabled access and subtitling video content where applicable.
External events
- Apply the ‘comply or explain’ approach to external speaking events by asking the following 2 questions when approached with speaking opportunities:
- What is the gender/ethnicity balance of the other panellists/speakers?
- What is the organiser’s diversity and inclusion policy?
- Where organisations are not in-line with our ‘comply’ criteria, we will recommend a replacement by someone (ideally an Institute representative) who is more diverse.
- In the unlikely event that an organisation is unable to ‘explain’ their lack of speaker diversity and who will not accept our recommended replacement, we will turn down the speaking engagement.
- Where information is available, highlight relevant and interesting work by people/groups/organisations from underrepresented backgrounds.
- Ensure all parties we work with aware of our diversity events policy by directing to it in our external speaker request form.
Event communications
- Ensure language and imagery used across communications channels are inclusive and accessible.
- Where possible, promote events to wider, more diverse networks of people.
Suppliers
- Ask all suppliers to provide us with their diversity policy.
- When awarding contracts, consider those with a diversity policy more favourably, alongside our other key considerations (such as being a social enterprise/charity).