In February 2025, we published a review of our approach to racial justice by Chrisann Jarrett, following a listening exercise with organisations we fund. We wanted to provide an update on the five actions we committed to then, and to share our next steps.
Our work towards the five actions in 2025
As in all areas of social justice, our work towards racial justice will always be ongoing rather than a series of actions to complete. Within philanthropy and across all areas of public policy, there are deeply entrenched issues that maintain racial injustice and racism. To create change, we want to set actions and hold ourselves accountable to these. We will continue to listen to those we support and other partners across the sector. A summary of our work is given below.
1. Recommit to ‘larger, longer grants’, particularly for led-by organisations, and to analyse our data on this annually
In 2025, £11.5m of Esmée ’s funding went to organisations led by communities who experience racial inequity. This compares to £7.8m to organisations led by organisations in 2024, £9.6m in 2023 and £4.4m in 2022. We introduced the Racial Justice priority at the end of 2022.
£2.7m of the £11.5m was through our racial justice priority, a further £5.6m through other priorities in A Fairer Future, and £3m across the rest of our strategy as in the chart below.
We have seen a growth in funding to led by organisations across the whole of Esmée, and particularly across impact areas. The data reflects the commitment we made to racial justice as a cross-cutting issue in our strategy and explain more the targeted work in each impact area below.
We recognise the historic underfunding of led by organisations and want to address that through ‘larger, longer grants’. In 2025, we prioritised led-by organisations for four-year grants, and this is reflected in our data. On average across Esmée, grants by led by organisations that experience racial inequity were larger (average grant size £262,719 compared to £219,223 not led by) and longer (average of 39.5 months, compared to 33.6 months).
2. Review our assessment process and guidance, particularly around perceived risk in governance to ensure consistency, clarity and transparency
In September 2025, we updated our assessment process and guidance with the aim of being clearer, more transparent and consistent. As part of this, we made changes to our criteria around governance, which we knew was a barrier to led by organisations wanting to apply to Esmée. Based on learning through our New Connections programme, we no longer require a minimum of three directors.
A distressing finding from the listening exercise was that colleagues within organisations were continuing to work on applications when sick or under intense external pressure. We never want applicants to prioritise our process over their wellbeing, and so have introduced a ‘hold’ step within our process.
3. Work further with organisations addressing racial justice across all our impact areas to understand how we can connect them up and support peer learning
Following the publication of the review, we worked with Chrisann Jarrett to undertake further listening exercises with led by organisations in our portfolio to explore how Esmée could best support peer learning. We thank Chrisann and the organisations involved for their time and honesty. There was a clear steer through this process that we should not think in isolation but work with other funders and partners that prioritise racial justice to think what a sector wide approach may be. We are continuing to work with Chrisann to develop this work. We also supported a convening event organised by the Alliance for Racial Justice.
4. Review our wellbeing support and think about how we best use Funding Plus to support organisations led by communities that face racial inequity
In 2024 and 2025, we have given 93 wellbeing grants to organisations to support wellbeing. 53 of these were to organisations led by communities experiencing racial inequity. This was partly in response to the racist and anti-migrant riots, prioritising led by organisations. In November 2025, we surveyed organisations and published a report with recommendations of how we best continue to best support wellbeing.
5. Ensure there is support for Esmée staff from communities who experience racial inequity to better support a culture of care
Through the finalising of our review, we worked with Vivify Therapy to offer individual support and collective care sessions for colleagues at Esmée. We have also benefited from the Wellbeing Circles for Black and racially minoritised staff as part of our work with Ten Year’s Time’s Community of Practice. And we have provided core cost funding to Future Foundations for their work supporting People of Colour working in philanthropy.
In 2025, we also published a report from our peer learning group on supporting employees with lived experience, including those who experience racism. From this work we have also hosted internal workshops to understand how we can better support colleagues with lived experience at Esmée, and as part of our DEI and climate action plan, are implementing a series of recommendations as to how we can best support colleagues with lived experience at Esmée.
As we have stated, and like so many areas of our strategy, work towards racial justice will be an ongoing journey for Esmée. We will continue to listen and learn through our work, including New Connections, as well as learning alongside partners across our portfolio.
Embedding racial justice across our strategy
- We will continue to embed racial justice within Our Natural World, through our commitment to and reporting against the Race Report, our codesign work to support diverse leadership and funding more led-by organisations. We will also ensure we keep our website up to date with our work in this area.
- In Creative Confident Communities, we are working with Locality on their Creating Places for Everyone report to understand how to support place-based and community-led racial justice.
- In A Fairer Future, we continue to explore the intersections of racial justice, migrant justice, gender justice and children and young people's rights.
- And across our strategy, we have begun to explore the intersections between climate justice and racial justice and are grateful to Systemic Justice for running a workshop for us on this.
In 2026, we commit to the following actions:
- Work to embed racial justice across our strategy and at the intersections of our priorities. We will do this through learning from external partners, better coordinating and learning internally.
- Continue to analyse our funding to 'led by' organisations annually, looking at size and length of grants to ensure we are addressing historic underfunding.
- Implement the ideas around peer learning that come from our development work with partners committed to racial justice.
- Continue to promote a culture of care at Esmée and think about the specific challenges colleagues from communities who experience racial inequity can face in our organisation.
- In light of racist and anti-migrant attacks, we will continue to prioritise wellbeing and crisis support both directly and with our peer funders.
- Explore with partner funders and the Impact Investing Institute, how to embed racial equity across investment portfolios.
- Continue to review progress on these actions including analysis of our funding to led by organisations annually with our Board, alongside our DEI and Climate action plan.
