Alliance magazine will be conducting an audit to better understand how to further its mission to provide an inclusive platform that represents and celebrates a diverse range of practitioners while highlighting equitable philanthropic approaches from all regions of the world.

The audit is being conducted in partnership with Impact Culture, a British firm which uses a collaborative approach to help clients develop impactful Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) strategies. Between Alliance’s print and digital editorial content, guest editors and expert guests on our panels as part of our events programme, we estimate that we work with up to 400 practitioners every year to serve many thousands of readers. Through Alliance’s work with Impact Culture on the EDI audit, we hope to understand:

• Who are our authors? Are we ensuring that a diversity of voices is reflected when it comes to characteristics including socio-economic class, race and ethnicity, gender, and nationality?
• Who gets what space? Alliance highlights voices on a number of platforms, from our daily free-to-read content to our print magazine to event panellists. Who is speaking in what space?
• Does our model need to evolve? Practitioners contribute content for free to Alliance, but we acknowledge that having the time and space to write and review content is a privilege not shared by everyone. Who are we leaving out? What can we do to be more inclusive?

To better understand how Alliance is doing, we will be surveying some 1,000 individuals who have worked with us in some capacity over the last five years. The results of the survey, along with focus groups and interviews conducted with Alliance staff and members of the Alliance Board of Trustees and Editorial Advisory Board, will inform the audit.

Charles Keidan, executive editor of Alliance magazine said: ‘Throughout our 25-year history, Alliance has aspired to provide a global view of philanthropy and space for peer exchange among practitioners. This important and timely research will help us understand how well we’re doing, what we’re missing and what we need to do now to fulfil our commitment to Alliance readers to be the place for what’s happening in philanthropy, everywhere.’

Alliance plans to share key findings of the audit later this year. The audit is being supported with funding from the Minnesota-based McKnight Foundation.

To share your own thoughts about working with Alliance or to reach out with any other relevant information, get in touch at alliance@alliancemagazine.org.