Empower Diversity was founded by Destiny and Abigail after more than 20 years combined working across the public, private and charity sectors. The pattern was the same everywhere. Funders trying to reach communities their processes quietly screened out. Brilliant organisations losing to better written bids rather than better work. Everyone could see half the problem. Nobody was working on both sides of it at once. So that became the job.

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The experience behind that decision covers both sides of the funding table. On the funder side, that includes work with Lloyds Bank Foundation and the Embassy of Ireland. On the delivery side, national charities including Sue Ryder and other national charities. Sitting in both rooms taught the same lesson again and again: funding fails quietly, in criteria, processes and evidence gaps, long before any decision is made. By the time an application is rejected, the outcome was often set months earlier, in the design.

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Empower Diversity exists to fix that, and does it through a named method: See, Shape, Sustain. First, understand the problem with evidence rather than assumption. Then, change the mechanics: the criteria, the processes, the decisions. Then, make it stick, so the change survives staff turnover and strategy reviews.

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The way of working is simple. Fixed fees agreed before anything starts. Plain findings, even when the evidence is uncomfortable. And both rooms, always, because fairness on one side of the table fails without readiness on the other.

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Empower Diversity works UK wide.

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We exist to make funding fair, effective and open to the people it is meant for.