UPDATED: Sustain seeks diversity and anti-racism consultant

Please note: This opportunity has been updated on 18 July 2022 to increase the value of the contract from £5k to £10k (with the possibility of additional paid work in 2023). And also to extend the deadline by a week to allow for applicants unaware of this value increase to be able to update their proposal if they wish. 

Sustain is seeking to recruit a consultant to work with us during 2022-2023 to undertake a range of analysis, workshops and audit-style activities to help Sustain make progress on diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism. We would like the consultant to work alongside our team in the style of action research and active learning. 

We recognise that inequity, exclusion and racism are baked into structures and institutions, including those that we work with, and in our own. We want to recognise this, be challenged, and to take decisive and practical steps to change ourselves and (in the context of Sustain as an alliance organisation) to catalyse change in others. 

We want to undertake this work in a way that will be useful across a wide range of diversity and intersectional issues, protected characteristics and people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. However, the focus of this brief is mainly on anti-racism and racial justice. 

At the end of 2021, we published a one-year progress on Sustain’s work on Diversity and Anti-Racism. During 2022, Sustain is participating in The RACE Report, and encouraging our alliance members to do so too.

What is limiting us? 

We are aware that we may not be conscious of all the things that are limiting us, and open to further challenge of unconscious bias or unexamined areas of our work and practice.  Some areas we have identified as limiting us are:  

• Staff recruitment – we have trialed a few approaches but have not attracted enough applications from Black people and People of Colour, neither in terms of number of applications nor as a proportion of total applications 
• Staff engagement – some staff and projects are more engaged than others. Some have more opportunities to take action (e.g. on public-facing work); some staff are part-time and pressed for time and capacity to respond proactively 
• First steps in partnership building with organisations led by or serving Black people and People of Colour 

What we want to achieve 

We would like to:

• Add greater accountability and gain perspective on the work Sustain has begun and what we plan to do next 
• Build confidence and trust among staff members and other stakeholders who are Black people and People of Colour, and enable their views to be heard and to influence our practice 
• Instil confidence in the approach the organisation is taking to tackle anti-racism 
• Target our efforts on critical or impactful actions 
• Lift our sights from the everyday and think about what we could achieve more ambitiously as Sustain internally, and in terms of influence in our wider networks 
• Establish a strong commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism as integral to all Sustain staff job roles and fundraising 

Of note: At the end of 2021, we published a one-year progress report on Sustain’s work on Diversity and Anti-Racism. During 2022, Sustain is participating in The RACE Report, and encouraging our alliance members to do so too.

What consultancy support do we need? 

Further details of the support we need from a consultant, and the budget, are provided in this downloadable consultancy brief.   

Guidelines for proposals

If you are interested in being commissioned for this work, please respond to the brief with a proposal in no more than four pages, providing:

• Information about you or your organisation;
• Your or your organisation’s experience of delivering relevant work;
• Short bios of the person or people who would deliver the work; 
• How you would envisage delivering this work, within the budget and in the timescale, including what you see as priorities, opportunities, challenges and key outputs;
• A brief indication of your view on how you might like to take this deeper or further, if Sustain were able to extend or increase the contract in future.

If you have existing materials or an example of your work that you would like to submit as an attachment, please do so, but please keep these relatively short, small in number and limited in file size.

The previous deadline for submission was 10am on Friday 29 July.  The new deadline for submission is 10am on Friday 5 August.

Please note: This deadline for submission has been extended to allow for applicants unaware of the increase in value of this contract from £5k to £10k (with the possibility of additional paid work in 2023) to be able to update their proposal if they wish. 

We will acknowledge receipt and let all applicants know of the outcome. Tenders will be assessed on merit, approach and organisational fit. We positively welcome applications from organisations led by Black people and people of colour.