Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

TSIC is proud of our diverse workforce and we continuously strive to be an inclusive workplace where everyone, regardless of their identities, can thrive. We are also committed to advancing equity – the promotion of justice and equality of opportunity and outcomes – in the wider society.

Our team at TSIC provide lived experiences, professional and academic expertise and the ability to push forward equitable social change across organisations of varying sizes and interests, and across the system.

Internally, we are actively looking for ways to diversify our team, which does well in terms of gender, race, age and religion, but not on disability, sexuality and socioeconomic backgrounds. We are in the process of putting together an Advisory Board which will hold our internal efforts to account.

Externally, we are actively embedding diversity, equity and inclusion across our service offerings to client, especially impact evaluation and impact investing advisory. We also dedicate our pro-bono time to support sector-wide initiatives advancing equity, including Diversity Forum for Inclusive Social Investment, Shift the Power UK Funders Group, Data Sub Group to monitor Covid-19 funding, etc.

This quarter, we are focused on impact evaluation – how to diversify the field of researchers and evaluators, and how to decolonise evidence.

Commitment to delivering gender equality and equity

At TSIC, in addition to our commitment to promoting gender equality and equity through our work, we are also committed to these principles through our internal processes and additional initiatives.

Internally, we…

• Internal policies and practices related to DEI: We have a DEI policy, which we monitor progress quarterly, and our Advisor, Eleanor Lisney, a disabled woman of colour, holds us to account on our DEI commitments.
• Proportion of leadership/staff who are women or women of colour: all of our core staff are women, and majority of our leadership are women of colour. TSIC is wholly owned by a woman of colour.
• Transparency and commitment to equal pay: we publish pay bands and conduct a salary benchmarking exercise every year. Bonus formulas were designed together with the team members with transparent criteria.  For our staff and contractors in the UK, we pay London Living Wage, and even for contractors abroad and in countries with lower costs of living, we pay UK rates.
• Flexible working: we implement flexible working practices and remote working to ensure that we broaden accessibility to a wide range of people working for us, especially those with care responsibilities. Given these efforts, we have been rated as the top 6 UK company to work for by Escape the City in 2021.

Externally, we…

• How do our business practices (including services) support rights of women, girls and LGBTQIA+ people: We champion for women’s empowerment in everything we do. In terms of our MEL work, we design and implement equitable, inclusive and feminist evaluations; and have thematic focus on gender and inclusion. In terms of our work in impact investing and grantmaking, we conduct research on gender lens investing; and incubate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, such as the Diversity Forum for Inclusive Social Investment in the UK. In terms of our work supporting non-profit organisations, we support women’s empowerment organisations with their business models and governance strategies.
• Joint work with equality-seeking women’s organisations: We incubated Lensational, a non-profit which empowers marginalised women and girls through photography and storytelling training. We have also provided pro-bono support to Sisters of Frida, which is a disabled women’s collective and provided job opportunities to a few of her Associates in tasks around data analysis and training them on impact evaluation and research.
• Advocacy initiatives: We partner with other organisations to advocate for the inclusion of women and people of colour in leadership roles within grantmaking, impact investing and research and evaluation. Some initiatives include: Women in Social Finance, and People of Colour researchers and evaluators group.