Inclusive Minds seeks firm to offer organisation new home

Inclusive Minds, an initiative supporting authentic inclusion in children’s books launched in 2013 by Beth Cox and Alexandra Strick, is looking for “an established organisation to give it a home”.

The organisation’s services, which include consulting and training, are used widely by children’s publishers looking to connect to people and groups with “vital lived experience”.

But despite developing into a community-interest company headed up by author A M Dassu and co-directors Heather Lacey and Jessi Parrott in 2020, it is still being overseen by a small team of volunteers all with full-time jobs, something Strick said “no longer works”. 

“We are looking for an organisation that might offer a suitable home for this vital area of work,” she told The Bookseller, saying it had grown from an “informal collective” into a successful agency.

She and Cox said: “Inclusive Minds has gone from strength to strength since we launched it nearly a decade ago. Particularly in the past two years, and despite the pandemic, it has thrived under new leadership. 

“However, it’s now a victim of its own success. It is simply too big and has too much potential to be led by a small team of volunteers. As such, we are on the hunt for a suitable agency or organisation to provide a home for its vital service.”  

The pair believe an established organisation may be best placed to do this so they can bring their structures and systems in to enable it to run more efficiently. The founders and directors are interested in hearing from established, impartial organisations or institutions that may be interested in administering Inclusive Minds or offering support in other ways.

Ideally, they say, the solution would allow the current directors to fully step back, with a view to the initiative being referred to as “Inclusive Minds administered by X”. The organisation that takes on Inclusive Minds would have full responsibility for the running and the assets of the venture but, although they are prioritising interest from structured and impartial organisations in a position to take on the entity as a whole, the founders are open to suggestions of other solutions that may enable Inclusive Minds to thrive.

Interested organisations are invited to fill in an online form.