News from The Equality Trust (March/April 2020)

COVID-19 will affect all of us, in every country. Those whom it will most affect are those already at the sharp end of vast inequalities in our societies. Part of our mission is to bear witness to the effects of inequality and to ensure that a range of voices are heard, so we would like to hear from you.

This will strengthen the increasing call for a fairer society and we want to make sure that your concerns and experiences are included in our conversations and consultation responses. We, along with Kate Pickett, our co-founder and Chair, are part of the Government’s Knowledge Exchange Group. We want to know what your concerns, issues and priorities are during this pandemic:

Alongside the deepening of impacts of COVID-19 on every sector of the economy, up until recently, the charity sector had been forgotten. Working alongside hundreds of other charities through ACEVO and other membership bodies, we joined the #EveryDayCounts campaign, calling on the Government to provide emergency funding that will keep charities alive and enable them to continue to serve their communities.

We are pleased that the government has responded to the call and has committed to £750 million for frontline charities. 

While this is a good first step, this will not be enough to prevent many charities from closing, many of whom, throughout the years of cuts, have been providing essential support.

Our next move is to pressure the Government to ensure that this funding is distributed more equitably. We have joined #CharitySoWhite calling on grant decision-makers to put these considerations at the heart of mechanisms developed to distribute funding. 

You can take action from home to support the charity sector in a number of ways:

1. Sign the #CharitySoWhite letter
2. Please continue to support the charity sector (not just us) where you can. The Government package will not apply to the majority of charities and will not be enough to save every charity from going under.

The Equality Trust is funded, in part, by you, our wonderful supporters. Many of you make monthly, annual and one-off donations. We would not be able to exert the pressure and influence we do, from local papers and councils, to national media and politicians and all the way to the United Nations!

We are also funded by several amazing charitable funders who, as the impact of COVID-19 became clear, immediately confirmed their continued financial support for our work. To those organisations we say a HUGE thank you for maintaining your commitment to funding our projects:

Tortoise is a brand new and very different kind of news organisation. It operates an open newsroom that listens to the world around it and is a slow news publisher that doesn’t compete on breaking news, but on helping people understand. It is a membership organisation and membership gives you access to journalism in a daily app but it also gives you a seat at the table, a place in their newsroom, via ThinkIns. These are open conversations that take place to help Tortoise journalists and members understand the drivers behind the news better. You see the fruits of these conversations in the journalism they produce.

ThinkIns last an hour and involve a conversation between members, experts and ordinary people. They hold them in their London newsroom and across the country every week and Wanda Wyporska took part in a ThinkIn at their offices last month. You can watch that Thinkin online here.

To make sure that the people who take part in their ThinkIns are from a diverse range of backgrounds and have had different experiences, Tortoise has a unique membership model by which it self-funds memberships (normally costing £100 a year) to share with organisations that will diversify their membership. They have given us 200 memberships for you to sign up and take part. Go to tortoisemedia.com/activate/network and use the code EQUALITYTRUST to sign up. You can read their latest piece: Unheard voices of COVID-19. Get in contact to suggest what the next big ThinkIn should be.