When discussing the topic of this blog during the UKCF 2024 conference with my line manager, he suggested I write about inclusion. My innate reaction to this was; ‘But I’m no expert!’. My secondary reaction was more of an epiphany: this is probably how many people feel when the topic of inclusion is brought up (unless they just so happen to be experts).

Thankfully, what wasn’t lost on me was how the conference made me feel. Being a part of the organising group, stewarding sponsors, note-taking for sessions, and dancing until my feet hurt all collectively made me feel as though I was partaking in something greater than the sum of myself. More importantly, my contributions at any given event over those three days or the months leading up to it encouraged me to believe that my voice, no matter how inexperienced or junior, was a valued and a valuable one.

But that didn’t just happen overnight. If the end goal was making all delegates feel included in discussions, panels, dinners and dance-offs at the conference, it is the culture that has been fostered and nurtured at UKCF and within the community foundation network that enabled this to happen.

So how did it happen?

Whilst I can’t speak on behalf of others, I certainly can (and will, if you know me) speak on behalf of myself. When I joined UKCF three years ago, I was on a six-week temporary contract. I had been prepped by my temp agency that the role would involve ‘office admin’, e.g. making people cups of tea and doing the filing. So that was what I had anticipated; to be the Cinderella of our then Brixton-based office. What I hadn’t anticipated was that, on my first day in-post, I would join a call to meet everyone in the operations department and be expected to attend every internal meeting as a fully-fledged member of staff thereafter. The nosey parker inside of me was thrilled. The thing that I least expected from this was that by making a simple step to platform my voice and encourage it, no matter how juvenile, my colleagues were empowering me. I believe that without that, I wouldn’t be in the position I am in today throughout many different aspects of my life.

It’s safe to say that there have been some significant changes in my time so far at UKCF, and that has certainly been reflected at this conference. Like many others, I was highly encouraged to see several of our international delegates not only participating in sessions, but sitting on some of the panels, which added a much-needed geographical diversity to our typically UK-centred bubble. And if you’d asked me before the conference how much Taylor Swift could play a part in a talk on the development of an internal accreditation process, I would have said, ‘surely not at all.’ Well, not anymore thanks to Megan Pitman from Wiltshire Community Foundation. But that doesn’t mean to say that we still don’t have a long way left to go.

If you’ve reached the end of this blog, you may recall that I professed to not being an expert on inclusion. But now, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. In the words of a fairly well-known expert, Albert Einstein, ‘the measure of intelligence is the ability to change’. My hope is that we continue to treat every member of our organisation, our network, and therefore our mission with the same level of advocacy, inspiration and open-mindedness as my team have treated me.

Milly Gurton is the Executive support officer at UKCF.