Diversity Working Group

Introduction

@johnmckerrell, in the Directors meetings, has offered to set up a working group around diversity. One of the original aims of the Boost membership was to use it as a tool to increase our diversity. So far we haven't done anything specific to further this as we don't want to make any mis-steps, we do need to make some actual steps soon though!

The thought is that we could aim one of the Boost memberships at a specific community in the hope that we can raise awareness and increase our membership in that community.

The current thinking is that we should "show our working" by looking at the make-up of our community, comparing it to the population of Liverpool, or "Liverpool City Region", and use this information to highlight where we need to do better. It might be that we don't need to do this, but it does seem that to outright say "Only members of X community can apply for this Boost Membership" we need to do more than just decide for ourselves.

If we do make one cohort be restricted to a certain community we also need to decide how to "police" that. Possibly we do not, we simply make it clear that that's what we expect. Alternatively we ask for more information on the application form, or perhaps we need to do even more?

Setting up this page to collect any links and sources of information we've had so far:

Notes & Links

• https://open-innovations.org/blog/2021-11-26-announcing-the-diversity-dashboard
• https://twitter.com/tonymc39/status/1595820937848430593?s=46&t=fY-HAqSwJbOCIpBpFdAPhw