The IPF believes that no one should ever feel that they can’t ask the charity for help, work with us or support us because of who they are, what they look like or what their personal circumstances may be.
We recognise though that simply having this attitude is not enough as unconscious bias and traditional approaches to recruitment, programme design and project delivery unintentionally introduce barriers to already under-represented groups.
We therefore commit to changing our culture and our working approach to remove these barriers wherever possible. By recruiting more beneficiaries to our Board of Trustees, involving beneficiaries in programme design and seeking the views of those impacted by our work in the setting of our future strategy, we aim to include a far wider range of opinions than before. We want to be an organisation that reflects the diversity of firstly our beneficiaries, and also the rugby community and the UK as a whole.
We have set ourselves targets where we can to measure our progress against this commitment. Where that is not possible, or risks becoming tokenistic, we have pledged to continually check our actions against our values and guiding principles to improve wherever it is needed. We have included these targets below along with updates on progress.
We will work with the RFU as our sole member as well as trusted external partners to continually check and challenge our approach and actions
Key targets and areas for change:
• Board of Trustees
o Reduce the average age of Trustees from 60 to 50 by June 2024. IN PROGRESS. Current average 55.
oIncrease the representation of beneficiaries from 10% to 20% by June 2021. ARCHIVED.
o Increase the proportion of female Trustees from 22% to 30% by June 2022. SURPASSED. Current representation is 46%.
o Increase the proportion of Trustees from ethnically diverse communities from 0% to 10% by June 2023. IN PROGRESS. Current proportion is 8%.
• Beneficiary involvement
o Include views of beneficiaries in a review of the current strategic plan (by Dec 2020) and the design of the 2022-2027 strategic plan (by Dec 2021)
o Involve beneficiaries in design of IPF research strategy by March 2021
• Volunteer recruitment and training
o Introduce mentoring programme for Trustees and Volunteers by August 2021
o Include IPF core values and guiding principles in induction and training materials for all Volunteers by August 2021