Do it Now Now centres our community's lived experience. In light of the current cost of living crisis, we took the opportunity to ask this community to give us insight into their current struggles. We have compiled the data and are able to share with you today. 

93 organisations, all of which are Black-led and either a charity or social enterprise, generously took the time to complete a recent survey. This report seeks to provide relevant research so that appropriate action can be taken to address the urgency of this crisis.

​Based on current financial standing, 59% of respondents shared that they could not operate beyond 6 months and only 4% had high confidence that funders have their best interest at heart during this crisis.

Unsurprisingly, the thing organisations most wanted funders to prioritise is unrestricted funding. The cost of living crisis has typically effected operational costs, the most difficult cost for organisations to find funding for.

Discover more insights into our research by reading this report and please share with your community.

Together with Jean Lemba, Jacques founded AFSCS (African French Speaking Community Support) in 2005. At the time, both volunteered supporting their fellow members from the French community in Birmingham with interpretation, reading and responding to letters, attending appointments, making phone calls and anything else that was needed.
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The organisation registered as a charity in 2012, with Jacques now holding the role of Chair of AFSCS. Jacques explains that the language barrier has the biggest impact on members of the French speaking communities in the area, thereby putting them at a major disadvantage, “Because of the language barrier, many people can't access mainstream services, don't understand what is going on, [such as with] the formation around COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccination. So this has been at the heart of the services we have been providing, including the social media studio, where we are doing many campaigns in French around all topics.”

There is also lack of support for children and young people as well as older people that AFSCS identified, “We are working around those issues, to address them and try to help the community to overcome them. For example, many who come to our drop-in centre don't know that, if they are on low income, they can benefit from some funding. So, we step in to say that if you are in need, genuinely, and you can't afford to buy this, we can help.”

Jacques describes how AFSCS has changed its approach over the last few years to make more use of social media to support the community, “It's a powerful tool, because when you put on information, more than 1,000 people can attend the event and can catch the information, it's really powerful. Nowadays, everyone is on Facebook, people can access YouTube, and it's a way to tell people that those media are not only for rubbish stuff, but it's also for things which impact your lives. So, this is what we try to tell people that, of course, you can be tempted to look at whatever you want, but if you're connected to our channel, you learn more, and you can improve your living conditions, because we do give the right information for you.”
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In future, Jacques and AFSCS would like to focus on immigration advice and supporting families, “We can see that many families are struggling to deal with kids or other issues. So having a community family support worker working with those families, that will be great.”

​This support already began during the early days of the pandemic, “During COVID we distributed 48 laptops to low income families for home-schooling. And one month ago, we collected 10 desktop computers from Birmingham City Council and we refurbished them to give away to families.”

Yaa is the CEO of the Hwupenyu project in Glasgow. The charity provides support for Black ethnic communities in Scotland living with chronic health conditions and aims to address health inequalities that Black ethnic groups face.
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Founded in 2014, the Hwupenyu project directly supports people with a range of health conditions - including Diabetes, HIV+, High Blood Pressure, Mobility issues, Mental Health conditions, and Hepatitis – through providing information and advice.

Yaa explains the particular approach that the Hwupenyu project is taking in order to provide its support, “What we are addressing in our communities is everything to do with health, but we look at it from the cultural perspective. For example, when it comes to mental health, somebody would walk through the door, and maybe feel overwhelmed with the situation with the DWP, or home office fees, or not having access to the benefit system, or sometimes having to remit back home. These are the things that we look at from an African perspective, and seeing how it impacts people's health. We also run a food bank, and we also look at the kind of food in Africa. We are from different cultures, west, east, south. So we make that effort knowing that, for example, people do not like tinned soups or canned stuff, we'll make that effort to try and get fresh food or African food that we know they recognise. With people in the asylum system that are so stressed out, at least they see food they recognise, and this will help them as well, mentally, and health wise.”

The pandemic has also led the Hwupenyu Project to expand its services, “Currently, we are embarking on a new project that starts this month, which is on diabetes. Because of COVID, the Black community was really hit, and one of the underlying factors was diabetes. So it made people aware and people started coming to us. And some of them were struggling with GPs where they were not being given glucometers. So that's one thing we are looking at trying to give them glucometers, making them understand if they are pre-diabetic, what to do. And also talking about portion sizes, because a lot of African food is 70% carbohydrates. So that's one of the projects we started this year.”

Yaa also strongly believes in combining resources with partner organisations, e.g., referring children from their services to a charity that can provide more specialist support to them, and vice versa, '“One of the things I believe in is we all have our strengths.”
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In terms of the future, Hwupenyu project is currently planning a strategy day with the board, but Yaa would like the organisation “to represent health for the Black community, we should be able to help people navigate the system, understand their rights, and not be afraid to go to the GPs, when you're not feeling well. So I think the most important thing is that we can represent a minority group in the health sector, and help them have confidence in any health issues. And also being able to refer them to the right organisations.”

Hannah is the founder of Young Ladies Club which seeks to raise aspirations in disadvantaged young women to achieve their education and career potential by providing mentoring, confidence building activities and career workshops from positive role models.

The organisation has recently expanded its portfolio to six programmes: three learning programmes, an ambassador programme, a mentoring programme and a crime prevention programme. The mentoring programme is aimed at girls aged 12 to 15 in schools. The focus is on trying to help them build up their self-esteem and confidence.

In our discussions with these leaders, what came through to us was how the issues raised aligned with Bill George's authentic leadership model. George's model reduced the qualities of leaders into five key dimensions, and the themes which came out of our discussions were in line with these underlying qualities of authentic leaders such as purpose, heart, values, relationships and self-discipline. The five key traits of the model are: 

1. Pursuing their purpose with passion
2. Practicing solid values
3. Leading with their hearts as well as their heads
4. Establishing connected relationships
5. Demonstrating self-discipline

Black leaders drive their organisations by a moral and ethical purpose and do not lose sight of their values and principles. They led with their heart, developed lasting relationships and achieved excellence through self-discipline. As authentic leaders, their colleagues responded positively to them, and their organisations also benefited from this authenticity. Looking at each of these dimensions in turn, we found:

Pursuing their purpose with passion
"But at the same time, it's important for me to be myself and not become someone else in that role; I still want to remain authentic, essentially and also to respect my feelings about things."
The Black leaders we spoke to were passionate about the areas in which they worked. They all had a deep sense of purpose for what they were trying to achieve, partly due to their lived experiences, that is, their personal experiences of the problems they were trying to solve. They were also highly motivated by their work since they all believed in their intrinsic worth. 
 
Practicing solid values
"So you have to be there to stand up for good causes, to stand up for those who can't stand on their own, you know. Otherwise, you don't get anything."
Once Black leaders find the purpose that ignites their passion, mainly through their lived experiences, they stay true to their established values. They acted following these values by making significant sacrifices to stick to them. 
 
Leading with their hearts as well as their heads
"I've been really, really happy to help the community and stand up for the community, not only the French community but also our local community."
Sensitivity to the needs of their communities and a keen willingness to help was highly represented in the sample group of Black leaders. These leaders demonstrated a deep compassion for members of their communities and work colleagues.   

Establishing connected relationships
"We work in partnership with the local authority and other stakeholders. In this country, if you don't dare, you don't get anything, you don't receive anything."
Enduring relationships based on their connectedness with stakeholders is the trademark of Black leadership. They achieve this by being open, sharing and committed to these relationships to achieve their goals. 
 
Demonstrating self-discipline
"I suppose one of the most useful bits of advice I had around leadership was just to be calm in the face of things being upside down because nobody's instilled with confidence by a leader who's emotionally just on a roller coaster." 
High levels of focus and discipline typify the Black leaders' style of engagement. They are very focused on their goals and consistently move forward towards those goals, even in the face of significant setbacks such as the COVID 19 pandemic.

Conclusion
​In a system that undersupports and underfunds Black-led organisations, we need to ensure that this traits are consistently fostered and developed to ensure best practice and outcomes for the underserved communities these Black lived experience leaders work in. 
"I'm actually going through some training in that area [leadership]. And that's because of a fund that we had applied for. I thought, oh, hang on. It'd be good actually to go deeper into this because leadership is really important. What is the leader? What makes a good leader, examples of charity leaders? Sometimes we get that we're leaders; I just think we forget that. You need to be reminded, and your skills need to be refreshed."
Some of our Black leaders were unaware that they possessed these essential traits associated with authentic leaders. We hope Black leaders are encouraged by the information provided in this blog and commit to leadership development programmes, such as the Common Call Lived Experience Fellowship Programme, to unearth and develop these areas of their authentic leadership skills. 

​One of the most common challenges made to the validity of Black-led, lived experience led and Global Majority led social enterprises and charities in the funding landscape is related to the veracity of our financial management and the strength or resiliency of our revenue models. 

Despite the work that organisations like ours have done over the past few years to elucidate the sector to the reality, both good and bad, facing our organisations with relation to financing, there is still too little publicly available research to de-risk lived experience leaders as a whole and determine with some finality that there is a social investment pipeline in the our communities. 

With that said, we are embarking on a research project to determine the strength of the Pipeline of Black, lived experience and Global Majority led social impact organisations with a view to co-design and develop a social investment funding model that is fit for purpose for the our community. To ensure the success of this research project and the validity of its outcomes we need as many of you as possible to fill in the survey. 

By giving us less than 10 minutes of your time, you will be contributing significantly to the development of a more equitable social investment sector that is well suited to our needs, the types of organisations we build and the future we want to see in our society. We will stop collecting responses at 11:59 pm on April 22nd, 2022.

​​In 2022 Centre Black conducted a study in conjunction with the Coalition for Efficiency to explore the lived experience of management and staff at Black-led impact organisations within the UK’s voluntary sector. 

The report found that Black-led impact organisations with majority Black* staff and management have personal experience of the challenges and issues they are looking to resolve in their local communities. The lived experiences of Black staff and management helps establish trust and better support their local communities which is reflected in the key outcomes of these organisations. However the report also found that Black-led impact organisations have largely negative experiences with funders with little or no consideration given to their experiences or insights. Many of the Black-led organisations featured in the report believe that the involvement process is tokenistic with funders placing little value on lived experience.​

'This report outlines the growing disconnect between mainstream funders, local authorities and local service providers. It stands to highlight the important role intermediary funders like Common Call play as connectors between leaders with lived experience and mainstream funders. When this work is done well, impact at the grassroots level is assured.' - Bayo Adelaja, Do it Now Now CEO.

The report makes eight key recommendations to funders and the wider voluntary sector community which includes placing more value on the lived experience of impact organisations and encouraging Black-led impact organisations to build stronger relationships with local MPs and councillors. This is a ground-breaking report which aims to make a tangible difference within the voluntary sector space in the UK.

*Black being defined as those with African and Caribbean ethnicity or mixed with Black.​