If you’re a Good Finance user, whoever and wherever you are, know that we are first and foremost user led. We’re here to support you navigate the world of social investment, and your experiences and opinions drive our work. We want our online content (blog posts, case studies, social media) to champion diversity and inclusion. We’re on a mission to showcase the lesser heard version of events and share our platform with the voices and faces that we sometimes don’t see or hear. If you are a user with something to share or a social investee from a less represented background, please do get in touch - we would love to hear from you.

Blogs, case studies and media

We showcase a range of perspectives in our podcasts, blogs and case studies - keeping in mind things like the geography, social background and identity of guest authors and those we feature. 

Social media and newsletters

We ensure our social media and communications are diverse and representative by showcasing a range of perspectives, people and organisations. This applies to all images and materials we share. 

We do not attend all-male panels or webinars. We proactively seek to attend events that help us build our reach and engagement with a diverse range of people. All our events online and offline are inclusive of more than gender and visible diversity. We are committed to including a diverse range of speakers within our events and actively seek out investors, investees and leaders from across the sector with lived experience.

Good Finance was founded on user led principles. Our mission is to be the trusted source of information on social investment for charities and social enterprises - this means working with and listening to all our users. We continue to uphold and embed this user led approach.  We strive to listen to you, to be open to feedback and respond to challenges and questions.

We do this through:

• Our user insight group who meet on a quarterly basis to give feedback
• Social media polls to gather our audience’s opinions or input
• Tracked and monitoring our Google and social media analytics to see how people are engaging with our content and information. 

We are making a conscious effort to improve and expand our marketing and outreach in order to improve accessibility to our online and offline work. In 2021 we launched the Addressing Imbalance programme, which seeks to reach and connect with diverse organisations across the UK to tailor resources and support to break down the barriers to social investment faced disproportionately by these groups. 

Before working with new partners, we explore their existing commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, and how we can embark on this journey together. If you want to work with us to build and improve on our delivery, reach and engage a wider range of people and act as our critical friend, please get in touch.

Another key focus area for our diversity and inclusion plan is supporting the social impact sector. This refers to both the social investment sector, as well as wider partners, stakeholders and suppliers. As an educational platform, we do not directly make or influence social investment decisions. However, we recognise our role in the sector and the ability we have to support, champion and share knowledge.

Through our commitment to the Diversity Forum, as well as social investors and stakeholders, we aim to champion diversity and inclusion initiatives and improve accessibility for our end users.

• Being transparent with investors, advisors and marketing partners about our diversity considerations
• Sharing best practice with stakeholders whenever possible, relevant and appropriate
• Sharing case studies and videos with investors in our directory
• Sharing knowledge through our Social Investment Unpicked e-learning course.

We work with our stakeholders to share knowledge and insight that supports the development of diversity and inclusion within the sector. We do this by:

• Promoting diversity and inclusion programmes and interventions being developed and delivered by social investors to our users via our online and offline platforms
• Working with the Diversity Forum and other interested stakeholders to leverage Good Finance as platform to reach users
• We will support and encourage social investments to support the full range of diverse recipients and issues we have in the UK

Another key focus area for our diversity and inclusion plan is our staff, governance and suppliers. We know the decisions we make about who we work with and how we work with them will impact and influence the delivery of this plan. We commit to diversity in our team at a staff, supplier and governance level. Find out more about how we do this in the next section.

• Diverse representation of geographical region, social backgrounds, gender and ethnicity in the Good Finance steering group and user insight group
• Ensuring the Good Finance team is representative of the communities we work with
• All team members have the skills, experience and empathy to speak for and with our sector, in line with our user led approach
• Buying social - we work with social enterprise suppliers wherever possible If you're a social enterprise who'd like to work with us, get in touch!

For us here at Good Finance, diversity and inclusion are so much more than buzzwords. Diversity is an intention, a conscious action, a continual improvement. Inclusion is accountability, learning, championing, a voice at the table, failing and trying again. A newer term in this context, equity, is about progressing from the current narrative, learning and growing, tackling inequalities and imbalances head on.

We are committed to transparency as we embark on this journey and will share relevant information on our level of engagement with diverse stakeholders. This will include, but is not limited to:

• Number of Addressing Imbalance partners
• Unique users on the Addressing Imbalance hub
• Representation of diverse organisations in our blogs, case studies and other resources

Diversity and inclusion isn’t just about business done well. It is about our lives, our experiences, our work, our health, our family and our friends. We know we’re not there yet, we know the sector has some way to go, but we also know we’re not done trying.