Charities are missing out on fundraising opportunities because they are not effectively targeting ethnic minority communities, according to a report entitled "Reaching Multi-cultural Britain" commissioned by the London Development Agency (LDA). The report, by Milestone Research, surveyed some of the UK's leading charities to look at how they could improve relationships with ethnic minority communities.

It includes details of successful partnerships between Shelter, Help The Aged and Macmillan Cancer Relief and various ethnic minority communities. But it recommends that the voluntary sector as a whole needs to improve links with the UK's ethnic minority communities who are estimated to have a total disposable income of over £13 billion. Gaining access to this sector would help charities target a new audience and develop fundraising and other campaigns with ethnic minority voluntary and community sectors.

Manny Lewis, Deputy Chief Executive of the LDA, said: "This research is a useful contribution to the debate on how charities can improve their links with ethnic minority communities, particularly in London. The case studies in this report show how charities can benefit from accessing untapped funding, but also in finding people for key fundraising jobs."

"To make these links stronger, managers of charities need to look at ways in which they can help staff to make more of an increasingly diverse population, particularly in London. Both senior and junior staff in many charities could benefit from enhancing their knowledge and understanding of ethnic communities."

The report recommends that charities:

• Encourage directors and personnel officers to work more closely together to look at their monitoring and recruitment processes and put in place appropriate strategies to promote job vacancies within diverse communities.
• Use the ethnic minority press more to publicise their vacancies within local, regional and national ethnic minority and voluntary sector networks and with ethnic minority business and professional networks.
• Share good practice in the recruitment and training of staff, taking into account ethnic diversity.
• Consider developing fund-raising partnerships with individual ethnic minority organisations - through joint campaigns using models such as the Help the Aged/HelpAge India and Macmillan Cancer Relief/Cancer Black Care partnership campaigns. See case studies below
• Encourage community and volunteer fundraisers to form links with local ethnic minority community fundraisers and with local community and voluntary organisations to promote joint fund-raising events and activities.

CASE STUDIES

Click here for a copy of the 'Reaching Multicultural Britain' report (564KB ).

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