Nonprofits face significant gaps and deficits in their efforts to achieve greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in the nonprofit world, according to some speakers and attendees at the Upswell conference here, organized by Independent Sector.
Participants voiced frustration with their own experiences with these efforts and shared ideas for how they could be conducted effectively during a three-hour workshop led by Aida Mariam Davis, CEO of Decolonize Design, and Selena Wilson, vice president for organizational effectiveness at the East Oakland Youth Development Center.
When Davis asked those present to describe their experiences with efforts at improving diversity, equity, and inclusion, participants detailed a string of failures. Because people attending the session were told that their comments would not be used elsewhere, no one except the presenters are being named.
One person said the trainings were just checking boxes, while another said employees were told to be their authentic selves until it displeased management. One participant said there was never clarity about what was meant by diversity, whether it was about race or religion or gender or sexual orientation. Another attendee said the trainings were just to make philanthropy feel good about itself.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings can mask a group’s tokenism, Davis said. Organizations are looking for the one or several minorities who make them look diverse. Often people are told they can look different but must talk, act, and dress a certain way — code for “acting white.” Sometimes groups implement diversity trainings because of a scandal or because of human-resources policies rather than because of a sincere desire to change.
“I think we can all agree that diversity, equity, inclusion as it exists today, is not serving us well,” she said.
Diversity Officers Undermined
Training can even be detrimental. In the private sector, she said, the more companies spend on training, the worse their results are. “You’re opening up Pandora’s box,” Wilson said. “You’re telling people, ‘We know this is a problem; we’re going to talk about it in a superficial way.’ And so you’ve kind of opened up the wound, and now it’s festering, right?”
They showed slides of a slave ship, a Native American boarding school, a Japanese internment camp, and a balaclava that evoked blackface to spark discussions of America’s history of racism and how that history plays out in modern society. They emphasized the scope and damage racism causes over time and the psychological harm that comes from having to fit into a dominant society that demands people conform to a white norm.
Improving diversity, equity, and inclusion is not only for minorities, they argued. Change that benefits one group benefits all. “Designing for those who have the highest needs actually raises the water for all boats,” Davis said.
But even groups that take concrete steps, like hiring a chief diversity officer, can fail. She referenced an article from Fortune that highlighted the ways these positions are undermined. Instead of filling the role with a person of color, they are often staffed by a white woman or a gay white man. They often lack a budget or a team. “Where else in the C-suite do you have no team?” Davis asked.
One participant noted that at large for-profit companies, employees of color are expected to work on diversity issues on their own time in addition to their jobs. It places undue pressure on employees and prevents them from pursuing other interests.
Different Perspectives
In another session at the conference, Frances Kunreuther, co-director of the Building Movement Project, presented some preliminary data from a study she is conducting that points to divides between the way white leaders and leaders of color view diversity efforts. While the data is not final, and in many areas both groups did agree, some differences were clear. White CEOs and executive directors were more likely to say that they engaged in diversity efforts to improve hiring and retention. Fewer leaders in the survey said these efforts were in response to a crisis rather than for other reasons, but leaders of color were more likely than whites to choose that answer.
White leaders were more likely to say their organizations were engaging in these efforts to improve the diversity of recruiting, provide training, and measure organizational diversity.
In response to a separate question about the nonprofit sector, leaders of color were more likely than white leaders to say they know how to improve diversity but that decision-makers lack the will to do so.
In an email after the conference, Kunreuther said that white-led groups see diversity, equity, and inclusion as primarily about increasing diversity, perhaps because their groups may lack diverse leadership. Those with leaders of color may already have some diversity in their leadership so they may be more focused on how it increases the connection to the community and mission.
The fact that leaders of color say nonprofits lack the will is likely a reflection of their experience at groups that lack a depth of commitment to these issues. She added that more research, particularly her planned focus groups, will likely shed additional light on these questions.
Not Enough to Be Allies
In Wilson and Davis’s session, Davis said that people of color need to become powerful advocates for themselves and others. “We need to be provocative,” she said. “We need to confront people with the truth. We need to hold people accountable.”
She and Wilson argued for a different approach to the goals for diversity, equity, and inclusion grounded in belonging, dignity, and justice. They presented a 10-point program covering a range of issues and approaches that broadly call for acknowledging anti-blackness and racism and the damage it has done to individuals and organizations and restoring those impacted by it. She called for measuring change as a means to creating a work culture that promotes belonging, dignity, and justice and that isn’t based on whiteness.
Common incremental approaches are not enough, she said. The idea of white people being allies to people of color and helping to advance equity and diversity within organizations was inadequate. “It tends to be more about the white person being the ally than it is about solving the problem,” Davis said. And the idea of being an “accomplice” — say, using your body to block police from deporting someone — was also not enough.
She urged people of color to consider becoming abolitionists — to step away from the current system entirely.
“Really think about what it would take to opt out of the current system and build a place, a space that really centers on dignity, on belonging, justice, making things fair and restorative,” she said, “but also creating a prosperous environment.”
Jim Rendon is a senior writer who covers nonprofit leadership and fundraising for the Chronicle. He recently wrote about how low pay hurts nonprofits and workers and about the challenges that nonprofit leaders of color face. Email Jim or follow him on Twitter.
