“Please provide us with demographic data for your board of directors, leadership, and staff.” Requests of this type are an increasingly common feature of foundation grant applications at a time when philanthropic organizations are targeting billions of dollars toward racial-justice and equity programs. The organization I work for, the Philanthropy Roundtable, is also asked to provide this type of information from time to time.
What motivates foundations to include diversity, equity, and inclusion measures in their grant-application and reporting processes? In some cases, they genuinely want to invest in groups and leaders with specific race or ethnic backgrounds because it is part of their missions. In other cases, they are trying to respond to an onslaught of pressure that they do more to address racial injustice. But before deciding to add such requirements, grant makers should pause to consider the implications. They should ask themselves: Is there another way to think about this? Is anyone really against diversity and inclusion?
Most of us want to work at diverse and inclusive organizations, understanding that such environments bring out the best in people. But the true benefits of diversity come from employing people with different points of view, different life experiences, different ways of thinking, different ideas on how to solve hard problems. True diversity and inclusion are something you can’t see just by looking at the race and gender makeup of a group of people.
As a child of refugees who fled from what is now Bangladesh and who was always somewhat of a rebel in my own family, I know I surprise people with my viewpoints on movies, politics, and so much else. But too often, before people even know me, they make assumptions about what I must think and feel based on my skin color.
The problem is similar when diversity, equity, and inclusion measures are based solely on outward group characteristics within an organization. Try as I might, I can’t tell what someone thinks or brings to the table just by looking at that person. That’s why it is so troubling when hiring decisions are now made with the assumption that all people of a certain color think the same, feel the same, act the same, and have the same “lived experiences.”
For me, this is personal. I have participated in many bipartisan or nonpartisan philanthropic conversations where people assume I come from a progressive perspective. Bizarrely, I’ve even heard that because I am of Asian descent, I don’t qualify as a person of color for these conversations. In reality, I represent a center-right organization that is committed to philanthropic freedom and has many diverse viewpoints on its staff. Making hiring decisions based on physical characteristics and then using that information to judge the effectiveness of an organization or a project seems a questionable metric at best.
Practicing Exclusion
Charitable organizations provide many critical services. Organizations, driven by a mission and fueled by supporters who believe in that mission, are in the best position to understand what types of diversity and inclusion serve their needs. In other words, nonprofits have diverse views about the diversity needs within their own organizations. But by enforcing their own version of “the right standards,” foundations are actually practicing a form of exclusion.
Forced diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements wind up placing unseen costs and consequences on the organizations trying to live by them so they can earn a good rating and be attractive to donors. Such mandates may result in not hiring the people best equipped to help nonprofits achieve their missions, incurring additional recruiting costs to meet diversity requirements when on a tight budget, and compromising on the quality of critical services by hiring less qualified people on the basis of nonessential criteria. Ultimately, such requirements may mean a nonprofit fails to effectively serve the very types of people the foundation is supporting.
None of this means nonprofits shouldn’t engage deeply with the communities they are trying to serve. We can’t know if we are addressing the right problems unless we closely partner with the individuals experiencing them. But I have talked with many community leaders benefiting from the work of excellent nonprofits and they could not care less whether the organization’s leader or staff check the appropriate diversity boxes.
Avoid Arbitrary Criteria
All of this speaks to the broader divisions within our nation — the implication that we can’t possibly have similar lived experiences if we look different. But problems such as poverty come with certain challenges, regardless of race. Mental illness affects lives, regardless of gender. Leaving prison without a support system in place puts people at risk for multiple problems, no matter what they look like.
When quantifying a person’s lived experience, we should ask ourselves questions like this: Should an effective organization supporting the families of incarcerated people during difficult times lose funding because it is white-led, even if the leader was herself formerly incarcerated?
True diversity and inclusion, yes. Forced arbitrary standards that may do more harm than good, no.
For the sake of those who depend on the nonprofits they love and respect, let’s hope foundations do some soul-searching on these issues. During a pandemic and after George Floyd’s death and subsequent social unrest, the country, too, is searching its soul for answers about how to treat one another with dignity and respect. Let’s not introduce new problems in the name of fixing others.