Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Research

In June 2020 The National Lottery Heritage Fund (The Fund) announced a wide-ranging Review of our approach to equality, diversity and inclusion. The Review covers The Fund's Culture, Governance, Investment and Workforce. An interim report (will be made available to the successful bidder) was produced in October 2020 and a final report is due December 2020. The interim report emphasises the need for evidence to support The Fund's review of its approach to diversity and inclusion. Specifically, it stated it would: • Use data and insight to inform our thinking, using quantitative and qualitative research to understand our current approaches to grant applications from groups representing people with protected characteristics, to our staff and to our approach to committee/Board recruitment and membership. • Commission additional research as needed to help inform our approach. To date there has been limited data and research carried out by The Fund to support The Review. It is proposed that we conduct research to support the detailed planning when the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) workgroups form in February and to support the delivery of The Review's objectives, specifically: • Define an ambitious vision of inclusive heritage to guide the Fund's activities across our workforce, our grant-making, governance and in developing our culture. • Set out our recommendations and actions to address inequality and barriers to inclusion. This piece of research will provide evidence to feed into the investment strand of the EDI Review. Aims and objectives The aim of the research is to provide insight that can support the Fund to become a more inclusive and equitable funder. We would like to find out how organisations and groups view and define heritage and culture and their views on the Fund and its role. This phase of the research will focus on groups currently and historically underrepresented in the Fund's portfolio, so will focus as much as possible on race and ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, socio-economic background and age and involve those organisations and groups that may have engaged with the Fund in some way in the past five years (more details about this in the Level of Engagement section below). There are two areas of focus. 1. Perceptions of heritage • What aspects of heritage and culture are important and relevant to different groups? • How well is this heritage currently supported? • How could the heritage and culture sector be more inclusive? N.B. The full description is within the attached document Your tender proposals must be sent electronically via e-mail before the tender return deadline of 14 November 2020, 1 PM to the following contact: Faruk Barabhuiya faruk.barabhuiya@heritagefund.org.uk