Race Equity and Diversity

We were founded on a belief in social equality – that all young people should have the same chance to succeed whatever their background.

And you cannot believe in social equality without believing in racial equality. We’re committed to addressing systemic racism both as an organisation and through the work we support.

We believe that embedding racial diversity in every aspect of our work; recruitment, staff development, due diligence, funding decisions, our non-financial support, governance structures and more, will make us a better, smarter organisation, truly able to implement our mission.

In August 2020 we started a Race Equity Taskforce internally to look at every aspect of our organisation and our work from a race equity lens, and identify recommendations for improvement. Those recommendations were unanimously approved by our Board in March 2021.

We are now working to implement these recommendations. Our EDI Taskforce, a cross-organisation group, is dedicated to this aim.

Our commitments

We're committed to embedding racial diversity into all aspects of our work. Though each aspect has a corresponding target, we are mindful that targets are not the priority. They are a guide to help us to be a better organisation.

1. Increase our racial diversity

a) At Impetus

  • Our governance: We believe that around 40% of our trustees and committee members should be from ethnic minority backgrounds. We came to this target reflecting on the London population and taking into account that at least 40% of young people served by organisations in our portfolio are from ethnic minority backgrounds.
  • Our staff: We believe that around 40% of our staff should be from ethnic minority backgrounds as a London based charity (working from a current baseline of 30%). We have work to do to attract more talent from all ethnic minorities.
  • We believe that young people must have a say in what we do: We are also focused on embedding youth accountability and representation in our governance structures and funding work.

b) In our partnerships

  • Racial diversity is part of our core criteria in selecting new organisations for our multi-year, unrestricted partner organisation investments.
  • We consider racial diversity in all aspects of our policy work.
  • We know that policy partnerships and coalitions will be more effective if they are more diverse in background and experience. We recognise we have an important role to play in advocating for this and ensuring that when we commission research we look for partners who can demonstrate that they celebrate and “get” diversity and truly represent young people and the barriers faced in our mission.
  • We recognise we need to grow, diversify and challenge existing and new networks across all areas of our work. This will make us a better, more informed organisation. We can’t fulfil our mission without this.

2. Embed diversity in our practice

a) At Impetus

  • Diversity is a key organisational KPI – in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, socio-economic class, geography and lived experience. We report against this KPI at senior management and Board level to ensure we keep learning and hold ourselves to account.
  • We embed and celebrate diversity in all our internal policies and procedures as a priority. This includes testing, learning and iterating what works in our recruitment processes, induction plans, training and development work, selection criteria for our partner organisation investments and public affairs partnerships, and in our office culture, as well as communications content development and dissemination.
  • We set up an internal working group on diversity. Our EDI Taskforce, a cross-organisation group, reports directly to senior management and our Board to ensure positive change continues.

b) In our partnerships

  • We support our portfolio partners to diversify. We are discussing diversity in our Peer Learning Forums whilst pushing ourselves to better help our partner organisations to build more diverse Boards, senior teams and proactively consider diversity in CEO succession. We ask that race is added to their data collection and analysis for better impact management.
  • We are committed to testing new types of organisation-support funding streams and investing in a broader range of organisations. Our work to embed lived experience, gender, disability, sexuality and many other aspects of diversity in all aspects of our operations and programmes is just the beginning.

We are acutely conscious that as a youth charity focused on socio-economic disadvantage, social mobility must be a golden thread running through all our diversity work. We have lots to learn, test, fail and build to be better in this area.

Actions we've taken so far

Below are some of the steps we've taken to embed race equity and diversity in our work.


We can’t do this work alone. We welcome your partnership, your advice, your challenge and your questions on our ambitions. Please email info@impetus.org.uk.

August 2024

We reorganised the group of colleagues tasked with progressing our EDI plans, renaming the group 'The EDI Taskforce'. This is a cross-organisation group of nine colleagues, with additional SMT and Board sponsors. Each member has 0.5 days ringfenced for EDI work per week. We also plan to appoint external consultants to support us in the next stage of this work.

June 2024

Our third annual panel discussion, hosted by the Impetus Leadership Academy, was titled 'From non-racism to anti-racism'.

We hosted experts Yvonne Field OBE, Ashley McCaul and Christopher Murray, to discuss the difference between non-racism and anti-racism, why it is not good enough to be merely ‘non-racist’, and how leaders can effectively embed anti-racism in their work.

Read the event write-up

March 2024

We announce that Streets of Growth, is a dynamic youth intervention charity using a “targeted streetwork” outreach approach in London’s Tower Hamlets, has entered our Connect Fund.

Read the announcement

February 2024

As part of our Connect Fund, we launched an open grant round looking for organisations that both primarily work with young people from ethnic minority* and socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and support young people to find work or develop work related skills.

October 2023

We enrolled the third cohort of the Impetus Leadership Academy, welcoming 12 more participants and widening the ILA community to 36 leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds.

September 2023

We celebrated the achievements of our second cohort of participants in the Impetus Leadership Academy art a graduation ceremony hosted by the programme sponsors, Bank of America

June 2023

Our second annual panel discussion, hosted by the Impetus Leadership Academy, covered 'Building truly diverse organisations'.

The expert panel of Sherine Mahmoud, Raj Tulsiani and Louis Howell, discussed the importance of living cultural values, the role of leaders in creating space for honest discussion, and how to ensure decision making structures reflect the diversity of an organisation.

February 2023

Following an open grant round, we began partnerships with four more organisations through our Connect Fund: Babbasa, Generation UK, IMO Charity and Sister System. All four organisations are focused on achieving race equity in youth employment through a range of interventions, including: intensive skills bootcamps, local and community-centred holistic support and therapeutic mentoring.

Read the announcement

October 2022

We enrolled the second cohort of the Impetus Leadership Academy, widening the ILA community to 24 emerging leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Meet our participants

September 2022

The inaugural cohort of the Impetus Leadership Academy graduated from the programme, with 10 out of 12 participants progressing into more senior roles, including trusteeships. One participant, Sat Singh, became an Impetus Trustee.

July 2022

We partnered with an executive search firm to make a more focussed attempt at attracting a diverse range of high-quality candidates. Through this organisation we made six appointments to key roles in our Investment and Philanthropy teams. We continue to work with them.

May 2022

As part of the inaugural Impetus Leadership Academy programme, we convened a panel discussion on how to embed race equity in grant making.

Read the event write-up

Q1 2022

We began our first portfolio partnerships through our Connect Fund, with Career Ready and MAMA Youth Project, two organisations working to address the employment gap faced by young people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

February 2022 - March 2022

We launched our Connect Fund. Together with our partners, we’re working to close the employment gap faced by young people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK.

As part of this work, we launched an open grant round focused on youth employment and race equity, looking for organisations supporting young people into employment.

Q3 & Q4 2021

Testing of new ways to increase the diversity of organisations we consider for investment; with particular attention paid to racial diversity. Our priority funding areas for 2021 were apprenticeships, social and emotional resilience and higher education.

July 2021

Launch of the Impetus Leadership Academy - in partnership with Bank of America we launched a 12 month programme offering professional and leadership opportunities to emerging leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds working in the UK youth sector.

Meet our participants

March 2021

Our Board of Trustees approved the targets recommended by the Race Equity Taskforce, agreeing that making racial diversity a part of how we work is fundamental to effectively delivering our mission.

February 2021

The Race Equity Taskforce presented their findings and recommendations to staff and captured reflections and comments.

August 2020 - February 2021

While our Race Equity Taskforce researched and considered targets concerning our organisation, work and our mission, they also held conversations with our wider group of stakeholders (including portfolio partners, funders, and other partners), all staff and our Board of Trustees.

August 2020

We set up a cross-organisation Race Equity Taskforce to critically assess our organisation and our work from a race equity lens and develop recommendations for improvement

Find out more

22/07/2024

From non-racism to anti-racism: how leaders can embed anti-racism in their organisations

An Impetus Leadership Academy event discussing anti-racism, why it is not good enough to be merely ‘non-racist’, and how leaders can effectively embed anti-racism in their work.
Read our blog

28/02/2023

Announcing grants to four new charity partners supporting young people from ethnic minority backgrounds into employment

Impetus announces £600k in grants to Babbasa, Generation UK, IMO Charity and Sister System
Read our blog