Sadly, this is an all-too-common situation. We seem to think that all we need to do is launch a task force and the initiative will magically happen. But there is soooooooo much more to sustainably launching a culture change initiative beyond just forming a task force. Little to no attention is ever given to the supervisors of the employees who want to serve on these task forces, or to shifting the employee’s duties so they can take on the work of serving on a task force, or to the role senior leaders must play to lay the foundation for the task force. And this neglect is one of the main reasons that culture-change efforts continually fail despite the best intentions of everyone involved.

So, below I explain the steps and actions that senior leaders, departmental directors, and task force employees can take to sustainably launch a culture-change initiative, beyond just forming a task force. The steps are clear, intentional, human-centered, and emphasize compassionate communication, all of which are aspects of any trauma-informed, inclusive, and growth-mindset culture. Which means you will be modeling right from the start the culture change you want to create in the organization. So, start your culture change work by changing how you launch the culture change initiative and follow these steps!

Step #1:

This is the only step that Senior Leaders must do, but it is critical to the success of every consecutive step. Leaders – recognize that this culture-change initiative is organizational work and build it into the organizational budget and deliverables.

• To start, 1) clearly explain why this culture change matters for the organization. Consider these prompts: Why this change and why now? How will this new culture impact how the organization achieves its vision and values? Is there a tangible reason for this initiative, such as employee data from a recent workplace assessment or retention/turnover data from HR? Will this initiative fulfill a strategic plan goal? Whatever the reason, get it down on paper so staff have a clear understanding of why this work matters beyond “it’s a nice thing to do.”
• Then, 2) identify the budget and resources you will invest in pursuing this initiative. Include direct expenses, such as tuition for trainings or contracting consultants; but also include the most expensive part of this initiative’s budget – staff time to serve on the task force. Staff time is the most often overlooked expense because the implicit expectation is that staff will simply absorb the work to launch and sustain this initiative into their regular work. But if you expect a task force of employees from across the organization to work together monthly for one or more years, you have to calculate the approximate time/expense and build that into the annual budget. And if you’re a nonprofit, this calculation will also help you fundraise for the initiative.
• Lastly, 3) identify which organizational deliverables will NOT be achieved in order for staff to sustainably take on this new initiative. And plan for 3-5 years of this added work…because that’s how long culture change takes to show impact. If you don’t state this, you are implicitly telling your staff to volunteer their time, which is the opposite of a trauma-informed, inclusive, growth-oriented, compassionate, or whatever culture you claim you want. Set your initiative up for success by doing the hard work of saying, “We are investing in X, which is why we will do less of Y for Z amount of time.”

Yes, this is hard. Really hard. But if you start with these 3 clearly articulated pieces, you will set your staff up for real success. Without these pieces, you’re just saying pretty words without conviction. And that’s not the culture you want to model, right?

The rest of the steps are for the employee who wants to serve on the task force and their supervisor to work through together to equitably support both the department’s needs and the employee’s desires to serve on the task force.

Step #2:

Using the guidance from senior leaders [see step #1], discuss and clearly articulate how this culture-change initiative can positively impact this particular department. Don’t get lost in pretty, esoteric words; get specific by having a frank and expansive conversation with this prompt: “How can our department benefit from one of our employees participating on the task force?” For example, the employee might be able to represent the department’s needs at this major organizational initiative. Or if there are trainings on the task force, the employee may be able to share their learnings with their departmental colleagues. Perhaps the task force can professionally develop the employee to better work with customers of the department. Think creatively and get these potential departmental benefits down on paper. This rationale will help the entire departmental team understand how having a colleague serve on the task force is a direct benefit to them, the department. Without this, you risk an undercurrent of resentment when work is taken off one employee’s plate and added to another’s [see step #5]. These colleagues may feel like they are unfairly “picking up the slack” to allow their colleagues to join what may be perceived as an “optional” committee. Take the time to draft this clear departmental rationale so all departmental staff feel invested and benefited.  

Step #3:

As best as possible, articulate the time and timeline needed to serve on the task force.  Consider how often the task force will meet: ex. once a month for 3 hours, once a week for 1 hour, etc.  Also consider if there will be work done between meetings as well, such as pre- and post-meeting work or tasks. And consider how long will the task force run: in step #1, we established that culture change work takes 3-5 years, so it is natural to assume that this may be how long the task force will run. But that does not mean all task force members should be implicitly expected to serve that long. The employee and supervisor should consider how long the employee will be able to serve while respecting both the task force’s need for consistent membership and the department’s needs for its own deliverables. To get these answers, the task force may need to convene and establish their meeting cadence, goals, and timeline, so this step may need to be revisited by the supervisor and employee a few times. But keep pushing for this information because it will help inform how much and which of the employee’s regular duties need to be adjusted to accommodate task force work. In the meantime, employee and supervisor can make educated estimates based on the task force information available. 

Step #4: Review the employee’s current job description and daily duties. Before we can add new work to the employee’s plate, we have to make space. This is a challenging step for both the supervisor and employee, but begin by reviewing the most up-to-date version of the employee’s job description. Then, take the time to answer the following questions honestly:

• Which duties in the employee’s job description best support the growth of the employee towards their long-term professional goals? It is easy to assume that the duties which are not essential to departmental function should be the ones that are removed to make room on the employee’s plate for task force work. But if those duties are beneficial to the employee’s long-term professional goals, removing them can put the employee in a position in which they feel penalized for joining the task force, which is critical organizational work [as established in Step #1]. So, have a frank discussion about the employee’s professional goals and identify any beneficial duties towards that goal so they are notunintentionally removed.
• Are there any duties that can be temporarily paused? Consider seasonal duties or tasks that are already being attended to by other staff. For example, are there certain meetings that are attended by other departmental staff already that do not require the task force member’s attendance as well? Are there “nice to have” but not “need to have” duties that can be paused for the duration of the employee’s membership on the task force?
• Are there any duties the employee is currently doing that are NOT listed in their job description? It is VERY common that employees spend significant time on work that is not in their job description. Articulate these clearly and ask the following questions:
  • Why is the employee doing work outside their job description?
  • Are they being compensated for this work?
  • How much do these extra duties add to their plate?
  • Can they be removed?

Side note: this step is simply good “job description hygiene” for all employees across the organization to go through.

Step #5:

Consider department bandwidth. It is likely that departments will need to flex/adjust to support the organizational initiative. But we don’t want to create a culture of resentment by “dumping” duties on our colleagues. So, the supervisor should consider the following questions, and maybe even make these a topic of discussion at a departmental meeting:

• What resources are offered by senior leaders in Step #1? How can these be used to offset the impact of the employee’s service on the task force?
• Are there are departmental colleagues who can sustainably take on any of the task force employee’s daily duties?
  • Do these colleagues have the skills to do the duties? If not, can these skills be learned in a realistic timeframe?
  • Are these colleagues interested in taking on this additional work?
    • If so, would this shift their duties so substantially that it would also impact their compensation for any reason? Why or why not?
  • NOTE: Have a conversation with these colleagues before transferring duties to them! Ground this conversation in the departmental rationale from Step #2. Don’t “voluntell” colleagues (otherwise, you risk resentment).
• If colleagues are unable to take on additional duties, does the department have funding from Step #1 to temporarily hire new staff for support?

Step #6:

Determine accountability measures. As established in Step #2, task force work is directly connected and beneficial to departmental work…therefore the employee should be supported, held accountable to, and compensated for doing it. Build the task force work into the employee’s annual goals, and schedule regular check ins so both the supervisor and employee are regularly communicating about progress.

• Note: if colleagues are taking on additional tasks from the task force employee’s plate, these colleagues should also have those new tasks built into their annual goals so they are supported, held accountable to, and compensated for doing it.

Step #7:

Use the answers to the questions above to draft a Task Force Support Plan. Do not assume that a verbal discussion is enough; get this information down on paper, for the supervisor, task force employee, and whole department to refer to regularly. Include in the plan:

• The specific duties to be removed/paused from the employee’s plate…
• …and what will happen to that work. Ex. Paused until a certain date; assigned to a colleague; assigned to a temporary hire; etc.
• the explanation of how the employee’s membership on the task force benefits the department’s goals.
• Approximately how many hours will be “created” by removing each duty, and make sure the total adds up to the ​ task force​ membership expectations from Step #3.

Consider sharing the plan beyond the department, to senior leaders, the task force, and even other supervisors with employee’s interested in serving on the task force so it can be used as a template.

After reading all this you may be thinking, “This is great! But how the heck can I get all these steps done???” Great question. And the truth is: you don’t have to do all of them; you don’t even have to do them in order. The steps above are listed for an ideal scenario, but reality isn’t so accommodating. So, do what you can. Each step you take will leave you and the culture-change initiative in a more sustainable place. Will it be harder to do it out of order? Yes. But you can still make progress. At the very least, you now have clearly outlined steps that you can use to activate other key players in your organization. And if you’d like further support, reach out to me. I’m here to help.

Lately, with all the pushback to DEI, I’ve been thinking a lot about scarcity. Scare City, more like, where fear is either a constant undercurrent or primary driver of our actions: the fear of running out of what we need, of losing income or health care, of losing identity or value, of not having or being enough. White Supremacy Culture is the capital of Scare City.It feeds us myths such as zero-sum thinking, wedge-issues, urgency, and bootstrap mentality to keep our energy low, so our resistance to the system is also low. It narrows our vision so we don’t notice other ways of doing and being; we don’t even notice our fellow humans. We only have enough energy to focus on surviving in the now. When we are in Scare City, we feel wrung out, burnt out. We feel alone. 

And that’s exactly what this backlash wants us to believe: that we are alone. It’s trying to divide us and break our networks by pitting us against each other for resources. It’s trying to scare us into retracting and recanting our values, to dilute our actions and center the comfort of those in power, to question the legitimacy of our work and of each other. The backlash wants us to see each other only as competitors for dwindling RFPs rather than collaborators who can complement each other’s work for greater social health. The backlash is pushing us towards Scare City.

In fall 2023, I was on that path without even realizing it. Like so many of us, I was hearing increased horror stories of whole DEI departments being laid off, doxing/trolling of DEI professionals, legal actions being taken against large and small companies for their equity efforts, etc. I was also noticing fewer inquiries in my inbox, and my budgetary outlook didn’t feel as stable as it had the year before. And, as a solopreneur, I started to feel more and more isolated without the support of a team to process this rapidly shifting landscape. I had a constant, low-grade fear that grew with each news cycle. I began shifting into a defensive posture, and it felt harder and more dangerous to say what needed to be said. And holding that fear was slowly but surely depleting my energy. Even my body was giving me physical signs of scarcity through flare ups of persistent pain. I didn’t consciously notice it at the time but in hindsight I see now that I was headed towards Scare City. 

It was at this time of growing fear that I was invited to attend an in-person convening of DEI practitioners, specifically to be in community with each other and think deeply about the needs of the sector. The conveners saw the trend that I and so many others were facing. They believed that the best answers would come from being in the same space, building relationships, and sharing energy and ideas. The gathering was small and intimate. The humans in the room came from across the country and were creative, kind, direct, generous, and provocative. We threw agendas out the window and focused on human connections. We ate and laughed and cried and thought expansively and collaboratively. We took the same advice we so often gave our clients and we moved at the speed of trust. In short, we spent 3 days together in Abundance. 

Being in Abundance is the opposite of living in Scare City. Abundance centers and embraces our humanity. It allows us to invest in and derive strength from interpersonal connections. It recognizes that having strong networks of support allows us to see beyond our individual perspectives: to see more options, more choices, and more resources. And having a more expansive perspective gives solace while also reminding us of our potential, which helps keep us accountable to a higher standard. Abundance allows us to trust and be trusted, which in turn creates stronger interpersonal bonds. And these are the bonds we can lean into and rely on when fear threatens to sap our strength and energy. Scarcity wants us to think and act as if we are alone; but when we are in a state of Abundance, we know that we are never alone. 

I went into that convening tired and scared. I left shifted. In 3 days, I felt more nourished and connected to my colleagues and my work. I drew inspiration from others’ experiences and saw more options, more creativity, and more ways to flex with the changing landscape. I felt held by my colleagues, both with compassion as well as to a higher standard of accountability than I could hold for myself when in a place of fear. It was a form of professional self-care that I didn’t know I needed. It reminded me that in these times of backlash when our work is being attacked, when we are being told that we need to be in greater competition with each other for fewer resources, when we are made to feel at risk if we even dare to speak our values out loud, that is exactly when we need to double down on our networks, invest in our interpersonal connections, increase our collaborations, and hold each other with compassionate accountability. When we are together, we can see this backlash for what it really is: another myth straight from Scare City.

So, my big takeaway from that convening: I am committed to finding more ways to continue being in community with you all so we can collaborate and complement each other’s work. Two years from now, I want to find myself more connected and with greater networks of support and accountability than I was 2 years ago. Because I know this backlash will fade. It will ebb and flow just like they always do; which also means it will come back again in the future. And when it does, I do not want to find myself in Scare City again; instead, I want to be stronger and more invested with you in our shared Abundance.

If you feel the same way, here are a few networks to join:

• DEIA Practitioners Support Group from Dr. Tiffany Jana and Dr. Johnetta B. Cole.
• We are One Conference, June 25-28, 2024 in Atlanta.
• Deep Equities Practitioners Network (DEEPn),
• and Oasis: Green Equity Collective.

Please share other opportunities in the comments. Thank you and be well together. 

Header image: Dryland image from rawpixel, licensed under CC0
Second image: Abundance Tree, painting by Anvar Saifutdinov, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Via Community Centric Fundraising.

Are you a member of a racial justice team at a white-led organization?

Do you constantly get asked by organizational leaders, “What have you accomplished so far? Your team has been meeting for 6 months, so what has that investment gotten us? Show me the numbers!”?

Are you having a hard time responding to these questions?

If so, you are not alone! I have been there, both as a justice team member within organizations and as a consultant working with these teams to build their capacity. This frustration is very common and it exists because there is a dissonance between how organizations invest in racial justice work and the returns they expect on that investment.

At the heart of this issue is that we invest in what we value. But in many white-led organizations, we only value quantifiable returns. In Tema Okun’s “White Supremacy Culture — Still Here,” she writes, “Things that can be counted are more highly valued than things that cannot. For example, numbers of people attending a meeting, newsletter circulation, and money raised are valued more than quality of relationships, democratic decision-making, ability to constructively deal with conflict, morale, and mutual support. Little or no value is attached to process in the internalized belief that if it can’t be measured, it has no value.”

“Things that can be counted are more highly valued than things that cannot…Little or no value is attached to process in the internalized belief that if it can’t be measured, it has no value.”

Don’t get me wrong, measurable tangibles such as assessments and plans are important to racial justice because we need to think strategically for the long-term and have the tools in place to inform and guide behavior — but these are not the only ‘returns’ we need in order to create a more racially just workplace.

The reality is these tangibles are only useful if the culture within which they are applied has sufficiently developed the skills and dispositions to bring them to life in racially just ways. How we do matters just as much as what we do. We must identify these intangibles and understand how they are connected to the tangibles. And we need to sustainably and equitably invest in the development of both.

So, how do you explain all this to your boss (or your boss’s boss) when they ask for returns, especially given the irony that their demand for quantifiable, “easy-to-understand” ROI personifies the exact culture you are trying to shift? And how do you explain this all in ways that don’t accidentally anger your boss (or your boss’s boss) who may still be steeped in white fragility? And how do you craft such a delicate response during the few hours you have each month to do racial justice work! Ugh!

To untangle all this, we need organizational leaders and racial justice teams to self-reflect. So, here are some questions to get both parties started:

LEADERS: IS YOUR ORGANIZATION REALLY INVESTING IN YOUR DIVERSITY TEAM?

Organizations that expect racial justice returns must invest equitably and sustainably in their racial justice teams — but very few do. If you are an organizational leader reading this, you may be thinking, “Of course we invest in our teams! We allowed them to form, and we let them meet each month during work hours! We are fully invested in racial justice work!” But so often this investment is an illusion, a performative action that leaders and even justice team members buy into.

Here are a few hard questions to investigate this supposed ‘investment’:

• Do we believe staff should be paid for all the work they do for the organization?
• Do we believe racial justice work is work the organization needs?
• Have we allocated paid hours for the staff on the racial justice team to do the work?
• Does this show up in the organization’s budget?
• Have we removed work in equal ratio from those team members’ plates so they can add these new hours? Does this show up in the organization’s budget?
• Did we subsequently shift the organizational goals to reflect the removal of those hours? (Did we decrease the overall number of kids taught or dollars raised or contracts signed because these staffers are serving on the racial justice team?)
• Did we shift the organizational goals to include the racial justice team’s work? (Note: this should include tangible and intangible deliverables.)
• Did we equitably compensate/resource the racial justice team for the emotional toll this work takes, especially on BIPOC members who have to navigate the racist systems they are also trying to uproot?
• Did we consider that a cross-hierarchical team will have very different hourly rates by position — which intersects with race and gender, which means the white men on the racial justice team in higher-power positions who lack lived experience with racism and sexism are getting paid more to serve on the team than the BIPOC women team members in lower-power positions?

If you answered no to any of these questions, your organization is not yet investing equitably and sustainably in its racial justice team, and its racial justice team is essentially volunteering their time. In other words: Y our organization is exploiting its staff. Ouch. And therefore your organization has no right to ask for a return on that said ‘investment.’

What can you do about this?

Change the dynamic. Dig into those questions and sit with the discomfort (BTW, that’s a racial justice skill to cultivate.). Use your positional power to examine the “investment illusion” and change it from performative to sustainable and equitable. This does not need to happen overnight but it does need to happen — intentionally and deliberately and in collaboration with the justice team. Remember: How we do matters just as much as what we do. Rethink your investments.

Without this examination, organizational leaders will continue to hypocritically expect racial justice returns without really investing in racial justice work. And when they ask teams to demonstrate their returns on investment, they are actually saying, “I’m not going to value your time nor will I approve the hours you need to do this work nor will I release you from the obligations of your full-time job nor will I consider the disproportionate impact of this work on BIPOC team members nor will I recognize the hypocrisy of paying higher-power white staff more to do this work than lower-power BIPOC. But I am going to expect you to use your unfunded time to continue to meet with the team, and create reports on your progress that are crafted in ways that don’t make me feel guilty or defensive, and meet milestones that the other senior leaders and I think are valuable even though we have done little to nothing in racial justice ourselves. Oh, but I stand with Black Lives Matter.”

Gross.

Justice teams: Are you letting the system you are fighting determine what your returns should be?

“Yes, teams need to develop tangible deliverables; but they need to do so in ways that model the culture they want for their organizations.”

Like all teams, racial justice teams should identify, monitor, and regularly communicate their work. But, they need to examine how they do this. Yes, teams need to develop tangible deliverables; but they need to do so in ways that model the culture they want for their organizations. This means they need intangible justice skills, such as being comfortable with discomfort, normalizing conversations on race and racism, developing trusting relationships with teammates across racial and positional power boundaries, engaging openly and vulnerably in meetings, centering and amplifying BIPOC voices, and so on. These intangibles are critical because any organizational plan or policy produced will only be effective if drafted and implemented in racially just ways.

Take for example a decision-making process that centers and amplifies BIPOC voices. This is a tangible product, a written process highlighting strategies like progressive stack during discussions, weighted voting to amplify BIPOC input, and transparent sharing of process and results with staff.

But, if the group making the decision hasn’t spent time to build trust between the team members, if they haven’t discussed how positional power and racial identities influence discussions, if they haven’t confronted the implicit fear of retaliation in the work culture and how it intersects with race and position, then the team will go through the motions of progressive stack and weighted voting — and likely end up with the same decision they would have made before they implemented this new process because people were scared to speak up, their silence was taken as affirmation, and everyone voted defensively to avoid retaliation.

This ‘racially just’ decision-making process will ultimately reinforce the white dominant status quo, leaving white folks to pat themselves on the back for an equity job well done and BIPOC folks to walk away biting their tongues — again. As they say, culture eats policy for lunch.

As Okun states, we can counteract this dynamic by including “process goals in planning. For example, make sure your goals speak to how you want to do your work, not just what you want to do. And look for ways to measure process goals. For example, if you have a goal of mutually respectful relationships [on your team], think about ways you can measure how you are living into that goal.”

Here are some questions to help your team identify the full breadth of your returns, both tangibles and intangibles:

What tangibles have we created so far?

(These can include protocol, trainings, assessments, team meetings, team job description, meeting norms and agreements, newsletters, etc.)

What intangible skills did we cultivate by creating these tangibles?

For example, by creating a justice team job description, did you examine how racial identities influence members’ contributions to the team’s work? Or, when meeting as a team each month, are you normalizing conversations on race and racism? Or, when crafting a staff assessment, did you consider how to safely elicit and amplify the voices of those most impacted by workplace racism (BIPOCs)? Get these down on paper; include those you feel you have made progress on and those that need further development.

How do these intangible skills support the tangibles?

In other words: How do the intangibles bring each tangibles to life?

Now think vice-versa: How was that assessment better as a result of safely eliciting and amplifying the voices of BIPOC staff? How are those team meetings more impactful as a result of normalizing conversations on race and racism? (And so on.) Remember: It is an iterative process so these tangible and intangible returns are building on each other.

How do we know we’ve cultivated these intangible skills?

Describe any measures of progress, or ‘ look fors,’ to help monitor.

For example, the team might report they are more “comfortable with discomfort” by regularly observing: “We take more time to sit in silence and think about challenges rather than react immediately with an answer.” Or, the team might report they are better able to center and amplify BIPOC voices in decision-making by observing: “It’s a habit now to ask at our meetings, ‘How do we know this is what our BIPOC staff want and need?’ and then triangulate our work with their input from the last survey.” Getting these ‘ look fors’ down on paper raises them to our conscious awareness so we can better monitor the team’s culture shift over time.

How are these skills helping our team practice and model our vision of a racially just workplace?

Whatever your vision of a racially just workplace, it will require intangible skills to bring it to life. For example, if your vision describes a racially diverse staff at all levels of the organization, ask yourself what skills and dispositions are needed to recruit and retain BIPOC staff in a majority white organization? What skills and dispositions are needed to support a racially just workplace, not a tokenizing one? These are the same skills and dispositions the justice team is developing on a small scale with the intention of rippling out to the organization, so take time to articulate how practicing these skills in a microcosm (the team) can model a racially just culture for the macro-system (the organization).

As we can see, it’s a classic both/and — we need both tangible and intangible deliverables on racial justice teams. But if we skip this examination, we default to the valuation and expectations of the dominant culture. And, if teams keep defaulting to the white supremacy dogma that only the tangibles matter, they will start to believe that false rhetoric: “Maybe we haven’t actually accomplished anything over these last 6 months. Ugh! We are failing!” They will essentially gaslight themselves! But d on’t let the system you are fighting determine what your returns should be. Take this opportunity to develop and communicate a more robust ROI narrative.

Doing organizational racial justice work is really hard; we know this. But it is made even harder when we lack real investment and are constrained to valuing only half our work. We can twist ourselves up in knots and spend our precious, limited time crafting carefully worded responses that only tell a portion of our story. But by addressing this dissonance head on, by having the hard conversations with ourselves, our teams, and our leaders, we can untangle those knots and upend some of the white supremacy culture that impedes our work. And then we will start seeing real returns on our racial justice investments.

Header image: photo by PhotoMIX-Company on Pixabay

Via Community Centric Fundraising.

How would you feel if I told you that Jeff Bezos got his groceries for free from a food bank?

If he did, it would probably shock and anger you, right? These feelings come up because we as a society assume that nonprofits exist to support those who are unable to access the services they need, and in our country, one of the biggest barriers to access is wealth. So, it is safe to assume that NPOs do not exist to help people like Jeff Bezos.

But this assumption is not always the reality.

“Many of our country’s economic elite directly and regularly use nonprofit services at a discount or for free.”

Outside of frontline nonprofits (those that offer immediate services for those in crisis, such as disaster relief, food banks, housing shelters, etc.), many of our country’s economic elite directly and regularly use nonprofit services at a discount or for free. From Mercer Island to Aspen Valley, affluent folks access subsidized activities from nonprofits, such as guided nature walks at ski resorts, science camps at aquariums, art activities in high-end museums, and more. They enjoy all of these activities for free or at very low-cost.

Sounds unbelievable, right? Does it make you wonder why nonprofit organizations (NPOs) would financially subsidize their services for the wealthy?

It’s a good question, and one we are going to examine here.

To start with, we must first understand how these services are tied to donations.

Here is what most of us assume:

FIRST: A specific societal inequity is identified, one that most greatly impacts those who cannot afford to offset the impact on their own.

IN RESPONSE: An NPO is created to address said inequity and support those who cannot afford these services otherwise.

TO PROVIDE SERVICES: The NPO solicits donations to make its services accessible.

IN RESPONSE TO SOLICITATIONS: Wealthy donors give funds to NPO to discount the service.

ONCE FUNDED: The NPO uses donations to provide accessible services to those most impacted by the inequity.

Seems logical, right? And it can work this way, like with frontline NPOs. But when we zoom out to the broader nonprofit sector, we will see there’s more to the story, especially when we consider how we use our services to secure funding.

What often happens instead is something like this:

FIRST: A specific societal inequity is identified, one that most greatly impacts those who cannot afford to offset the impact on their own.

IN RESPONSE: An NPO is created to address said inequity and support those who cannot afford these services otherwise.

TO PROVIDE SERVICES: The NPO uses its services to engage wealthy donors in order to solicit donations to make the service accessible for all patrons.

IN RESPONSE TO SOLICITATIONS: Wealthy donors give funds to the NPO to discount the service.

ONCE FUNDED: NPO uses donations to provide free or discounted services for ALL patrons, including those who can afford to pay more and/or are not impacted by the identified inequity.

To illustrate how this works, let me give an example from my own life.

“If a majority of the folks served by these classes were affluent and could easily afford the “full price” tuition and beyond — why were they only paying $10/kid?”

I used to work at an environmental education nonprofit located in an extremely wealthy community, one in which a vast majority of residents were well-beyond comfortable — they were affluent. These folks were the primary users of this nonprofit’s services because it was located smack dab in the middle of this affluence.

Just like with many other nonprofits, the services offered were designed to be extremely affordable. For example, a 2-hour kids art class was priced at only $10/child. There were scholarships available for folks who needed additional support, but to take advantage of this, lower-income folks would have to spend money and time to travel to this nonprofit’s campus (#HousingSegregationInEverything).

If a majority of the folks served by these classes were affluent and could easily afford the “full price” tuition and beyond — why were they only paying $10/kid?

Based on countless conversations over the years with NPO professionals, the theory goes like this: NPO engines run off donations, and we often use discounted or free services to engage wealthy people and then cultivate them over time to donate. Potential large donors send their kids to a summer camp or they take a nature walk at a ski resort, they get on a mailing list, and hopefully down the road, they give a large donation.

So, why is that a problem? It seems to work, right? Even though this can work, I believe it does so with many harmful effects.

5 harmful effects that result when we subsidize our programs for rich people

1. It lowers service-providers wages

One of the most harmful ways NPOs keep prices down is by underpaying staff.

At the aforementioned NPO, I was a college graduate in a job that was nationally considered highly competitive, and my “compensation” was a stipend of $25/day (I worked 40 hours a week) and a shared room in a dormitory with utilities.

Here’s what my compensation didn’t include: health insurance, retirement benefits, student loan deferment, food, and more. It also did not take into account the high cost of living in the surrounding affluent community. In short, if you wanted to work at this organization, you had to be able to afford to work there. The low-cost classes provided by me for the affluent clients was made possible because I wasn’t paid well.

2. It limits staff diversity

Statistically, white people are better able to afford working for lower pay (like $25/day). BIPOCs in our country by and large have less accumulated wealth than white people. So it’s not surprising that when an NPOs offers low wages in a geographical area that has low racial diversity and high cost of living, we end up with lower racial diversity of staff in these NPOs. To further compound the issue, if these NPOs promote from within like so many do, you get a homogenous staff pipeline at all levels.

3. It further devalues our services

An argument I’ve heard in favor of keeping NPO service costs low for affluent clients is that these folks are “shopping the market as savvy consumers.” This brings a for-profit perspective into the nonprofit sector, and pits NPOs against each other, so that rather than working together to complement each other’s services, NPOs try to outcompete each other to provide the “best deal” and entice potential wealthy donors. But, many of our NPOs exist because the service they provide is already undervalued and underfunded by society. So, it is counterintuitive to further decrease our pricing because it reinforces the idea that our service is “low-value.”

To illustrate this, let’s go back to my experience with the NPO above: I would often hear complaints from wealthy parents, like “the NPO down the road only charges $8/child so why are you charging $10?” or even arguments to not pay at all because “I donate to here so this should be included.” These were the same parents who would casually share, “We just sent little Johnny heli-skiing for his 10th birthday,” an experience which costs probably about $2,000 , while I was earning $25/day to teach little Johnny and 15 of his friends.

Using free or discounted services may bring potential wealthy donors in the door, but it does not increase their perception of the value of our services; instead, it reinforces the perception that our services are not worth much. And this perception by those in power is part of the reason why our services are needed to begin with.

4. It promotes inter-team disparities

I have often found that the staff providing the services of the NPO are typically paid less than their philanthropy team counterparts. This is often justified by how much each team “brings in” financially.

For example, at the organization I previously worked at, I only “brought in” $10/child whereas a gift officer might bring in a $500K donation. And, in contrast to me, the gift officers were paid a livable wage for their work. And all staff knew of the pay difference between the teams … which created a lot of disharmony between two teams that needed to work together.

As mentioned above, the services provided by an NPO are already undervalued by society, so if we keep justifying paying service-staff less because of how much they “bring in,” we end up perpetuating the very inequities our NPOs were created to uproot. And, if we don’t address internal pay equity, there is the added negative impact to critical inter-team relationships.

5. It incentivizes NPOs to modify services for the wealthy

When programs, especially education programs, are used to entice wealthy people in ways that secure a donation, the program content tends to change from what is needed to really achieve our missions (such as systems-change education) to what the potential donors in the audience will be more comfortable learning (such as systems-reinforcement education).

As an environmental educator in front of a group of potential donors, I am far less encouraged to talk about the history and impacts of inequitable wealth distribution and how this contributes to environmental harm. I’m instead encouraged to talk about resource distributions for squirrels and flowers and worms. The content ultimately becomes “safer” for a potential donor in the audience so that we are more likely to get the gift. But the service is then less impactful for making the real change our missions require.

So, what can we do about this?

The practice of subsidizing affluence is deeply embedded in our culture, but changing our fee-for-service model is a big way NPOs can stop it. But it requires fundamentally changing how we think and act about money — and talking about money, especially with those in high-powered positions can be uncomfortable. So, if you do tackle it, expect waves — big ones.

But! Just because something is hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, right? So, here is a very simplified four-step plan that will at least spark good conversation at your organization.

The four-step plan

Step 1: Analyze what your service programs actually cost

Many NPOs have a hard time distilling the actual cost to provide services, but it is critical to revising a fee-for-service structure, so take the time to do it. And when you do, be sure to include equitable compensation for staff who are providing the service. This one will be a hard conversation, especially if pay-transparency is not part of your organization’s culture. But, this is absolutely fundamental if we want to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem. Have the hard conversations.

Step 2: Establish the actual “full price” for the service and build the analysis into philanthropy communications.

This is key because we can’t just raise fees out of nowhere. We need to explain the process above and how doing this will help us better achieve our mission. We need to clearly state how the previous structure was part of the system we are trying to change, and by redesigning our fees-for-service we will center the needs of those most-impacted rather than the expectations of those least-impacted.

Step 3: Offer a sliding scale for clients based on their self-determined needs.

Bluntly sharing the “full price” can jar affluent clientele used to getting a bargain for your services. By offering an opt-in sliding scale, we can communicate the real cost of making equitable change while allowing folks to self-determine how much they can afford.

This self-determination is regularly used in frontline NPOs. For example, I could use a food bank to get my groceries for free, but I won’t unless I financially need to. We have a societal understanding that if I take free food from a bank when I could afford to pay for it, I would be taking it away from someone who really needs the service . We need to cultivate that sensibility among affluent patrons of all NPO, not just frontline NPOs.

(FYI, I am not advocating to increase prices for low-income clients. I do not want anyone to unintentionally shame low-income clients for accepting support. While prices for affluent clients will increase as a result of this analysis, prices for low-income clients should at least stay the same if not decrease as they will be better supported by this new pricing structure.)

Step 4: Lastly, keep asking for the donation.

After the “full price” is shared with the clear rationale, ask the affluent clients to make tax-deductible donations for any contributed funds beyond the price. We have to be confident in our communication and believe that once we are clear and honest with our donors, they will donate, not because they got a discount for a class but because they believe in our work and see that we are living the change the world needs. And they are playing an active role in this, both in their donation and their payment for our services.

We don’t tend to think about how fees-for-service in NPOs can either support or undermine our equity intentions, but doing this hard work will take us one step closer to building a world in which everyone can survive and thrive, one where we feel proud of both the work we do and how we do it.

And, for some extra motivation, keep reminding yourself that you don’t want to be the NPO that gave Jeff Bezos a handout!

Header image: photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

Hi, Everyone! My last blog on racial equity and boards received a lot of support, so thank you for reading and sharing it! Surprisingly, it also received a number of requests from white board members asking me to push them even harder. That is amazing! Yes! Let’s do it! As a response to those requests, my latest board-focused blog below asks some hard, introspective questions about power. If you are a white board member on a majority white board and you want more of an RE push, this blog is for you! That said, consider the last blog like algebra class and this one is like calculus: If you felt really challenged by the last one, spend time to digest it more thoroughly before jumping to this one. Because this one is gonna poke at some sensitive spots, so you’ll need the resilience that comes from regularly grappling with racial equity and whiteness. Okay. You’ve been warned. Let’s go!

Acronyms used: HWL – Historically White Led organization; RE – Racial Equity; BIPOC – Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; BLM – Black Lives Matter; NPO – nonprofit organization.  

Welcome back, white board members, to the next step in your RE board development work! (note: be sure to read my last blog on racial equity and boards before launching into this one) So much of our effort to change our boards focuses on diversifying the board composition and bringing in more BIPOC members. But today, I want to take a closer look at the other demographic already in the room: the white board members. And, as part of my commitment to offer practical strategies in these blogs, I included a step-by-step activity for you to engage in.

Let’s start by setting a scene: imagine for a moment…

It’s a Friday night and you want to take your family out for a good meal, so you call the restaurant ahead of time and make a reservation. You show up on time, the kids are hungry, and you’re ready to enjoy tasty food after a hard week. You see that the restaurant is super crowded (this is a pre-covid scenario), and the host apologizes and says they don’t have capacity right now and asks you to wait to the side. You and the family do so patiently. 

As you wait, you notice a few things: 

• Only about 1/3 of the diners are actively eating, and the rest seem to be finished with their meals and are simply chatting with each other at their tables; 
• A few new parties enter the restaurant and get seated right away even though they don’t have reservations and haven’t been waiting (but you notice their “sleight of hand” tips to the host); 
• Some of the other folks who are waiting get frustrated and leave vowing never to return to this restaurant; 
• Some of the other folks who are waiting notice another restaurant across the street that has space and they leave quietly to go there. 

Finally, at around 8:30pm, a party gets up and leaves their table, and the host rushes over to you with apologies and asks if you’d like to follow him to the table. How does all this make you feel?

Now, let’s replace this hypothetical restaurant with your board room. The two are actually very similar:

• Board rooms also have limited capacity;
• It takes time for board members to “leave the table” (term limits); 
• Not everyone in the board room is actively engaged and are simply taking up space (as nonprofit reformer, Vu Le, says: “I have a Rule of One-Thirds when it comes to boards: 1/3 of them are helpful [and] 2/3 of nonprofit boards are useless or harmful.”);
• There are many ways to get onto boards that aren’t always consistent or advertised to the public (i.e. applications, recommendations from current members, recruitment by staff, a large donation, etc.) and this causes confusion as to who gets a seat, when, and why; 
• Boards have lost potential members who:
  • Leave to go to other boards; or, 
  • Leave frustrated and offended by the long wait and the lack of communication, and then let their communities know not to trust this organization. And the board members in the room may never realize the damage they have caused with their passivity. 

Sound familiar??? This frustratingly common scenario is way overdue for analysis. So, that is exactly what we are going to do today! We need to stop being passive “diners” taking up space in limited capacity rooms. We need to actively examine our board rooms, not only for who we want to bring into the room but who is already in the room and if they should still be there.  This is going to be hard because dominant culture does not encourage people in power (especially white people) to question whether they should have that power, how they got that power in the first place, and if those methods were racially biased. So, the activity below may be uncomfortable. But that’s good! If we’re not at least a bit uncomfortable doing this work, then we’re not doing it right! 

Step 1: Establish context:  

• Remember that NPO board members are volunteers. Yes, they are volunteers with a lot of responsibility and many even bring in large donations or powerful connections, but board members do not get paid by the organization for their work. So, any discussion about who should or should not have a board seat will not result in losing a job. Egos are at stake here, not paychecks.
  
• Let’s acknowledge the fear: you may be concerned that having hard conversations about whiteness and power with board members will result in them feeling hurt or offended, which may lead them to pull their donation or access to their networks. That is a possibility. We need to prepare properly for hard conversations, but we also need to give members the benefit of the doubt that they want to live their beliefs and will continue to support the good work of the organization without being “paid with power” to do so. 

Step 2: Examine your beliefs:

With that context in mind, let’s establish some shared beliefs. I crafted this list from the many npo racial equity and/or “we stand in solidarity with BLM” statements out there. So, keep in mind that I am not inventing these beliefs but rather restating them here as context for the self-reflection questions later. 

Step 3: Ask yourself some hard questions:

If you answered YES to any of the belief statements above, and especially if you did so for all of them, then continue to the questions below. These questions are designed to help you examine the power you have as a board member and why you have it. 

1. Why do you serve on your board? 
   • This seems like a simple question but let’s really analyze this. Most board members serve because they want to support an organization working on a cause they really believe in. Members are often asked to join a board because they have skills, networks, or experiences they can contribute to the benefit of the organization. But think about that logic for a second: being on a board is a power-position; does this mean we think board members are only willing to donate their skills, networks, or experiences in exchange for decision-making power? Is that true for you? Are you only willing to donate your services in exchange for a board seat? Or, would you be willing to donate your skills, networks, and/or experiences but without the final decision-making power of a board seat? If not, why not? 
2. Are you a member of the community/ies most impacted by the injustice your nonprofit is trying to address? 
   • Whatever sector your nonprofit serves – education, environment, housing instability, food scarcity, etc. – I can guarantee you that middle to upper class white people are NOT the most impacted by its injustices. So, if you are a middle to upper class white person and therefore least impacted by the work of your nonprofit, should you have the power to make decisions that affect those who are most impacted? Really grapple with this question. Clearly articulate your rationale and hold it up against the beliefs above. 
3. Are you taking action to be a white ally on your board?
   • As stated in the beliefs, we need white allies in this work to collaborate with BIPOC and leverage their privileges to identify and uproot racial bias in systems and build real, antiracist solutions. In other words, all “diners” need to be engaged and active in RE work when sitting in this limited capacity “restaurant.” As a white person, are you doing that RE work on your board? If so, what is that work? Attending meetings or working on a gala once a year is not RE work. If you attend meetings and hold the room accountable to evaluate their decisions with an antiracist lens, that is RE work. If you work on the gala and use your influence to equitably fill the room and contract a keynote on racial justice in your sector, that is RE work. If you are not doing this work, why not? What are the expectations of allyship for your white board members? Is there an unspoken assumption that the “new” board members (i.e. BIPOC) will be the ones to take on the RE work, and it’s optional for the “veteran” members?
4. Does your board turnover match the urgent rate of injustice? 
   • When working with majority white boards, I often hear, “we need to make room at the table for BIPOC to join.” But with limited seating, the only way to make room now is for the folks already there to leave. Are members only rolling off at the rate of your board term limits? Does this rate match the rate of the injustice your organization is trying to address? I have yet to hear a nonprofit director or board member say that their work isn’t urgent and doesn’t need to be addressed right now. If you believe your nonprofit work is urgent and that work is directly connected to systemic racism (see beliefs above), then developing the proper composition of your board to do that work most effectively needs to be just as urgent. Would you be willing to give up your seat before your term limit in order to make space for someone who is more impacted by the decisions being made at the board table? (note: this does not mean you would have to leave the work or the organization. There are other ways to contribute…see below.)
5. Have you considered flipping your role? 
   • Many majority white boards establish “advisory boards” comprised of the individuals most impacted by the injustices their npo is working to uproot: ex. an environmental org may have an advisory board of Indigenous Tribal Members. These folks are asked to “advise” the white majority board on decisions but they do not have the power to make these decisions on their own. Why not flip that model? As a least impacted person, would you be willing to serve as an advisor to a board comprised of folks who are most impacted? You could share your expertise as a policy-maker, lawyer, program-specialist, etc. If giving up this power makes you uncomfortable, dig into that. Go back to the list of beliefs above. Which of those beliefs are connected to this option of stepping up by stepping aside, and do you believe those?

Step 4: Make a plan…then, do it!

Congratulations for making this far into this activity! Now, you may be asking, “what can I do about all this?” Here’s my recommendation: 

• Do this work intentionally, not reactively. You don’t want to cause harm or jeopardize the legal status of your organization by making rash decisions. Make a plan, but make sure it has an urgent timeline that matches the rate of the injustice your organization is working to address.
  
• Redefine what it means to be “qualified” to serve on your board. Base your rationale on the beliefs you stated in your RE and/or BLM Solidarity statements. Ask yourself, “what do we really believe in, and what are we willing to do to live our beliefs?”
  
• Develop a pipeline of potential members who meet your new definition of “qualified.” If you need support creating a pipeline of BIPOC board members, consider partnering with an organization whose goal it is to get BIPOC professionals on boards, like the Black Board of Directors Project. Or, really put-your-money-where-your-solidarity-statement-is and hire a recruiting firm (BIPOC owned and operated, please, like BIPOC Executive Search).  
  
• Have the hard conversations with your board chair and/or executive committee about who needs to have decision-making power and who can advise those with power in order to best meet the needs of the work (i.e. step up by stepping aside).
  
• Examine your board matrix to prioritize who is in the board room and why. Related, hash out the role of white ally board membersand how they will be held accountable to those standards.
  
• And finally, don’t be afraid to ask for help. This is challenging and very nuanced work. And it needs to happen now. If you want support in this, please reach out to me. I am here to help. You got this; I got you; together, we can make change. 

It’s time we call out the (white) elephants in the (board) room!

Notes:

*I specifically phrased this belief to read “have or can cultivate” the necessary skills to govern as opposed to just “have” the skills because there is bias in recruiting only for established expertise and not the ability to develop them. To start with, many of the skills NPO boards seek are from sectors that are historically white, like fundraising, law, and finance, so that means without specific recruiting criteria that prioritizes racial diversity, you are more likely to have multiple white fundraising professionals, white lawyers, and white CPAs on your board. Because of this dynamic, many white majority boards subconsciously believe there aren’t any BIPOC professionals out there and they need to “lower the qualifications bar” in order to bring on BIPOC board members. Stop that thinking in its tracks. It is flat out wrong and reeks of implicit bias.There are highly qualified BIPOC professionals out there. Just because you only have experience with white professionals speaks more to the history of the professions you are recruiting from. It also speaks to who is attracted to your organization…and who isn’t. Really examine your needs and intentionally recruit BIPOC who have the skills you need. For example, if you need HR experience, then recruit Black HR professionals. Or, consider what skills new board members can learn rather than only recruiting those who have accreditations (i.e. do you really need a CPA on a board in order to run a financial report?). Finally, consider what you are trading if you unwittingly prioritize skills like fundraising as equal to or in higher value than the experience of BIPOC in a racially biased society. Which understanding is teachable and which only comes with lived experience?

Header image: photo by Headway on Unsplash

Acronyms used: HWL – Historically White Led organization; BLM – Black Lives Matter

It seems like every day there’s another statement from a historically white led organization (HWL) stating that they “stand with Black Lives matter.” Overall, I am really happy that there is a swell of consciousness and recognition among HWLs of the systemic racism against Black people. There are many white leaders out there who are really paying attention with heightened urgency and truly want to make change. In the grand scheme of things, this has the potential to be such an impactful shift in the nonprofit sector to really identify and uproot racism in our systems. But, as I was reading these beautifully crafted statements, I found myself getting frustrated, even angry, about this onslaught of verbal support, and I know I am not alone in this feeling (ex. #ShowtheReceipts is trending on many platforms). Why? Because many of these organizations are the very ones who one year ago, one month ago, even one week ago either overtly or covertly refused to stand with BLM. It used to be too risky to be seen with BLM; now it is too risky NOT to be seen with them. The historic refusal of HWLs to stand with BLM and take real anti-racist action in their organizations has actually contributed to the need for movements like BLM to begin with. In all of those statements out there, there has been little to no acknowledgment of these ironies. Is it any wonder why I and so many others are questioning the authenticity of these statements?

“It used to be too risky to be seen with BLM; now it is too risky NOT to be seen with them.”

This all got me thinking: what do I want to see in a statement to let me know that the organization isn’t just hopping on the solidarity bandwagon? Here’s what I came up with:

1. Acknowledgement of the organization’s past silence and complicity. Chances are at some point in an organization’s recent history, some staffer/client/volunteer/etc. asked the question, “why don’t we openly support BLM?” Or, maybe it was more subtle, like “why do we support diversity and inclusion but not racial justice or anti-racism?” If this was the case for your organization, as it was for so many HWLs out there, please own it. Otherwise, your statements now about standing in solidarity can feel inauthentic. Silence is a form of action. Own the past complicity of this choice. Because in reality, it is this silence on the part of those with power that contributed to the need for Black communities to shout, “Black Lives Matter!”
2. Self-reflection to understand the rationale of this history and its impacts. Why didn’t more HWLs stand up for BLM before? Maybe they felt it was “too political” (suggestion: dig into the coding on this…what does “political” really mean???), maybe they were worried about offending/losing donors, maybe they didn’t want to be seen as radical. Whatever the reason, please own it and explain that you will no longer use it as an excuse. Because if you don’t take time to uproot the implicit bias in your past rationale, it will keep coming up over and over again in the future to stop your progress as you try to take action for BLM.
3. Acknowledgment of the violence. For every Black person who is killed by racist violence, like George Floyd, there are thousands more whose lives are also impacted every day by the same systemic oppression: jobs not offered, schools not funded, compensation not fairly provided, avenues cut off, microagressions endured. Daily. But it took violence and the subsequent outrage of an entire community to wake your organization up to the point of making a public statement. Why? Please really grapple with this question and own it. And please promise to never again wait for this level of violence before taking action. 
4. Commit to real action informed by Black stakeholders. “Standing” is an action, so I want to know what actions your organization will take and how you will choose those goals. This is a golden opportunity to center and amplify Black voices! Even committing to meeting with Black stakeholders specifically to set these goals for your org is an action, a first step. And if you do this, please compensate these stakeholders for their time to work with you on this plan. Remember: they are helping YOU bring to life your commitment to BLM, not the other way around. 
5. Publicly state a timeline. This is a major complaint I hear from BIPOC staffers and stakeholders: HWLs so often promise to make change but do not provide timelines to follow up. Just like with any strategy, give yourself a “report back” deadline and share this with your community members. Otherwise, without this accountability, it is likely that these actions will simply be pushed off when some other stressor enters the organizational system (as history has so often taught us).
6. Authentically report back on progress. I know that organizations will not succeed in everything they try. But, it is okay to try, fail, learn from failure, and try again. This is how we grow, and this growth is not easy. We need to be comfortable with imperfection because we will likely not hit every target the first time we try, but we need to recognize why we didn’t, be able to explain how we will adjust to do it better, and have the developed resilience to stick with it. (one major caveat here – trying and failing at the expense of Black people is NOT okay. Take the time in your initial planning to identify and implement ways to mitigate fallout if failure to achieve a goal should occur. This takes deliberate intentionality and will be more easily addressed if planning is done with Black stakeholders from the start.)

If an organization makes a statement that takes all this into account, I would feel excited and engaged.* I would want to follow them, to learn more about them and support them by holding them accountable, and maybe even get involved as a volunteer or a donor if I see evidence of their work. In short, an organization that made a statement like this would take a critical step towards building a relationship with me, not just making a statement at me. But, crafting a statement like this may be hard, so as part of my commitment to offer practical strategies in these blogs, I drafted a template for organizations to use as a straw horse: 

“We didn’t stand up for BLM before. We were scared and didn’t want to risk losing our largest contracts/donors/non-Black stakeholders. We now see that our silence and lack of action was complicit in the systemic oppression of Black people. And we are so sorry that it took so much violence against Black people to make us see this. So, we commit to taking risk, speaking out, and working hard from today on. We will deliberately analyze our organizational systems and structures to expose and uproot anti-Black bias. We will set these goals with our Black community members in ways that amplify their voices and needs. We will report back transparently on these goals every ____ through our website, email, etc. We will share what went well, what didn’t, what we learned, and how we will apply that learning to move forward. This is how we will earn the honor of saying that we stand with BLM.”

This is not a plug-n-play statement and it’s definitely not one-size-fits-all, but it should provide a foundation to start from and good fodder for discussions. And I hope it helps because I truly want this current wave of consciousness to succeed. Because we can’t and shouldn’t push off radical change any longer. Now’s the time, and we’re just getting started.

If you’d like to discuss how I may be of further support to your organization, please reach out. You got this; I got you; together we can make change.

*Please note that I am speaking for myself as an Asian-American cis-hetero woman who works professionally as a racial justice consultant. My recommendations are informed by my lived and learned experiences and the input of my BIPOC colleagues and friends, but I do not speak for anyone else.

Header image: photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Acronyms used: RE – Racial Equity; BIPOC – Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color; HWL – Historically White Led organization; ED – Executive Director; NPO – Nonprofit; DEI – Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Author’s note: I wrote this blog 3 weeks ago, but I couldn’t post it and pretend as if the past 7 days haven’t happened. In the nonprofit sector, we MUST ground all of our work in the context of the greater context of legalized racism, and that starts with identifying and uprooting racist structures in our own organizations. Vu Le wrote an excellent blog on this recently, and my blog below focuses on one of the many pieces he calls out: the nonprofit board. The smaller organizational systems we engage with daily reinforce and are reinforced by the greater systems, and in nonprofits, the board systems are often the least examined even though these structures can make or break the racial equity work of the organization. So, board members, this one’s for you.

I work with a lot of nonprofit Executive Directors who ask me, “how do I bring my board along on our organization’s racial equity journey???” I get it. I am a former ED myself, and I’ve worked with and served on boards of all kinds. Often, these boards and their members are well-intended but rarely expected, encouraged, resourced, and/or held accountable to do their own work beyond “embracing diversity and inclusion” in the organization. And that lack of commitment and subsequent lack of action is a serious problem because of the leadership role boards play in npos*. But there are ways to address these challenges and make real change on your boards! And, there is a LOT of desire by board members themselves to do so! So, as part of my effort to post more practical equity tools, I’m sharing some of my favorite board resources, a sample RE document you can use, and some hard-learned advice to help shift nonprofit boards towards real RE commitments. 

Let’s start by painting a picture of what a board commitment to equity could look like…

Imagine this scene: The Board and Racial Equity (RE) are strolling through a park, enjoying the fine weather. Action!

Board: Did you know that today is our anniversary? Two whole years together.

RE: Really? That long, huh?

Board: Yup. Two years ago today we crafted that equity statement and posted it on our website.

RE: Wow. Time really flies.

Board: Since then, we’ve been spending time together learning about justice, taking implicit bias tests. We even brought in that trainer to talk about white supremacy culture, remember that?

RE: I remember. Good times.

Board: Well, I’ve been thinking lately, I want more than just casually learning about you, RE. I’m ready for a real commitment. I want to move beyond just having good intentions. I want to make this real, RE!

RE: Are you sure? We’ve been here before, Board, and we always dance right up to the line of action and then stop. What makes this time different?

Board: I know, RE, I know. I’ve said it so many times before, and each time I always backed down. Like that time that large donor met you and got really uncomfortable, and I caved. Or that time our Executive Director retired, and I said I didn’t have time to do a full hiring process and make a real commitment to you.

But you always held me accountable to a bar that I have never been held to before, RE, and to be honest, that scared me. I’ve never been pushed as much as I have been with you. You have shown me how much more I can be, how much more I need to be if I really want to lead. And, I took your advice! I talked with the community members most impacted by the injustices we are trying to address…they want us to be together, too! They said that if I really want to serve them, I need to make a real commitment to you. 

And that made me see that I am ready to take real action with you, RE. I will stop saying that my role is to just “support the staff” as they work towards you. I will stop hiding behind the excuse of only having 6 meetings per year. I want to examine my recruitment matrix and bring on new members from the communities most impacted by injustice. I want to overtly talk about overrepresentation, not just underrepresentation. I want to retool Robert’s Rules of Order to amplify nondominant voices, and I want to dig out my dusty bylaws and examine them for the racism deeply embedded there. I want you, RE, to be my lens. Heck, I want to get Lasik so you’re not even a lens that needs to be put on! I want to be the Board you believe I can be!

RE: Wow, Board! This is a lot to take in. If we do this, it’s going to be hard, you know that, right?

Board: I know.

RE: You have members who don’t acknowledge our commitment, some of whom are incredibly uncomfortable when I’m even brought up in conversation.

Board: I know. I will change that. I will hold all my members to the same standards and actions and no longer expect just our new BIPOC members to tow this line. RE, I’m ready. Let’s do this. Let’s make this real.

RE: Oh, Board! Since the first 501c3 was established in 1954, I’ve been waiting to hear those words! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

Cut, print, that’s a wrap! 

Don’t you just love a happy ending? Well, it’s actually a beginning because if you dig into that story, you can see all the work that board is now committed to taking on, the real actions that will make their commitment to RE stronger. So, how can you move your board to “put a ring” on Racial Equity? Here are a few resources:

1. If you’re interested in better understanding why board action towards RE is important, here are a couple resources I love: Activating Race Equity Problem Solving on NPO Boards; and Diversifying Boards Means Ceding Control: Are White NPO Leaders Ready? These are only a couple of the MANY out there**, but they’ll get you started and they have lots of good embedded references to follow, as well. 
2. If you’re interested in a step-by-step process, this is a resource I’ve mentioned on my blog before, but it is so good it deserves another shout out: ProInspire’s Equity in the Center Awake to Woke to Work. It offers clear and tangible ways (with rubrics!) to help you “pull the board lever” in your organization. 
3. If you’re interested in board info in general, I always find BoardSource.org really helpful. Not everything they offer is RE focused, but they do have helpful resources on DEI and great templates, such as matrices and bylaws. 
4. Lastly, for a template to challenge the conundrum of changing board demographics, check out the my Board Recruitment Commitment to RE. This commitment is bold and open and doesn’t hide behind pretty or coded words. It can be an internal document (not everything needs to be published externally), acting as a guide for the board to change membership changes over time. If this commitment were adopted, you can see how many other board policies would be examined as a result of this one: the recruitment matrix, onboarding documents, bylaws, member assessments, etc. A commitment of this level would be the result of a LOT of hard work, but it is not an end-product; instead, it is a beginning that ripples out, providing members more and more opportunities to actively demonstrate their commitment to RE. A board that makes this commitment would really put a REng on it!  

 Finally, here is some hard-learned advice that will hopefully help you on this journey:

1. Being the leader on this does not mean you have to have all the answers, but it does mean you need to be in it for the long haul. Making a real RE commitment is not something the board can dabble in, picking up RE and putting it down as stress enters and exits the system. That’s the touch-and-go mentality you’re trying to get away from. If you’re serious, and if you’ve gotten this far in this blog you must be, just know this will be hard and the successes may be small and take time to achieve. But progress can be made! My advice to sustain your sanity: document those successes because you can look back on them to spur your stamina over time. Trust me: this documentation actually helps, and I wish more boards did this as part of an annual board progress assessment, not in a “pat ourselves on the back for doing nothing” way but rather a “what did we set out to do, where did we succeed, where did we fall short, why, and how will we move forward” kind of way. It may feel slogging at times, but nevertheless, she persisted, am I right?
   
2. Leading this effort will take an extra toll if you are a BIPOC board member at the helm. It is exhausting to uproot the bias you experience on a daily basis, and that goes double if you’re volunteering your time to do it. In addition to the assessment advice above, I recommend exploring ways up front to sustain your energy that address racism in the professional sphere. Talk to your board chair or ED about allocating board resources to support your health to lead this challenging work. For example, does the board have funds set aside for members to attend professional networking sessions (like Future for Us) and BIPOC affinity groups (like, EPOC or the BIPOC Project)? Can you use board meeting time and space to host a BIPOC affinity group if you are fortunate enough to have multiple BIPOC board members? Your insight and membership are critical to achieving the RE vision, so build in ways to support YOU from the start because you’ll need it. (And, if you’re a white board member reading this, PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR BIPOC PEERS!!! If you want a resource on how to do this, check out these guidelines for white allies from Racial Equity Tools.)
   
3. Create a coalition for change! Are there others on the board who are also committed to this work?Can you convene them to shore up energy before taking it to the whole board? This is especially helpful with large boards who don’t meet often or those that have had high turnover. Bring these allies in. You will need their support in this journey, and you can work together to become a united force speaking with a clear and consistent voice. This may be the start of your board RE committee!
   
4. If your organization has an equity statement, center it in your rationale for the board work in RE: What are the responsibilities and tasks of the board and how can these support or hinder this vision? Does our board reflect the communities most impacted by the injustice our organization strives to address? If the board has already expressed a desire to address equity (as so many have), why do we want to undertake this work? What are we willing to risk to do so, and what do we risk if we don’t? etc.***

Okay! That is it for this blog and I hope it was helpful. I know that this is hard work, but you don’t have to do it alone: I can help! If you want more support than the resources and tips above, contact me to discuss how I can help you address racial equity at the board level. This is absolutely critical work and you should not have to do it without support. You got this; I got you; together, we can make this happen. 

Notes:

* As a refresher or if you’re new to working with boards, npo boards are designed to guide visioning and planning and oversee the macro-level organizational functions; they hire, assess, and (if needed) fire the ED; they fundraise; they network; they donate their skills and expertise. NPO boards are often made up of highly passionate, highly skilled volunteers who believe deeply in the mission of the organization. But they are also highly removed from the npo’s daily functions and they spend maybe 30 hours a year together as a group. Then, there’s the diversity issue!!! Most npo boards are majority white, even in sectors most impacted by injustice that is perpetuated/justified/upheld by whiteness (the mind reels with contradictions!). There are oh so many reasons why this dynamic exists and I’m not going to get into all that here (if you want to, though, check out this Board Source report or see the many links below). But all this  – the demographic makeup of the board, its general detachment from the organization, each other, and communities served, and the lack of real accountability to move beyond verbal commitments – has made addressing racial equity on HWL boards a serious challenge.

**More resources on board development: 

• https://boardsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/5-Questions-for-board-diversity-2.pdf 
• https://medium.com/new-faces-new-spaces/if-your-board-looked-like-your-community-203c878bb0a0 
• https://www.compasspoint.org/blog/does-your-board-foster-inclusivity 
• http://www.nonprofitinclusiveness.org/recruiting-board-members-color
• https://boardsource.org/resources/building-diverse-inclusive-board/

***If your organization does not have an equity statement yet, consider making this the first step in the board’s work towards RE by dedicating board time to work with the staff to create one (use the activity in my blog last month to push this process). Because the board serves the organization, it is very important to envision the organization’s RE journey first; then the board can determine their role in getting the organization there. Also, if you are a board member considering RE, it is highly likely your ED is already thinking about this, like the countless number I’ve talked to lately who are trying to figure out how to bring their boards along. I would bet your ED would LOVE to have a board member approach them to discuss how the board can embrace RE to better support the organization!

Header image: photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash