In April, when a Chicago police officer fatally shot 13-year-old Adam Toledo, MacArthur Foundation president John Palfrey issued a denunciation of the killing. His brief message was accompanied by statements from three of the foundation’s local grantees. “Let’s listen to leaders who represent Chicago’s diverse Latinx communities,” he said.
Palfrey, a white man who had previously led the elite Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., took a similar approach after last year’s police murder of George Floyd and the harassment of a Black bird watcher in Central Park. He put out a statement that included the formal remarks of a diverse range of MacArthur colleagues, including men and women of different races and ethnicities.
The MacArthur officials’ messages are an excellent example of an organization applying diversity, equity, and inclusion principles to its communications, said Sean Gibbons, CEO of the Communications Network. “They elevated and passed the microphone to grantees. You didn’t have to click to see those statements; they were all of a piece,” Gibbons said. “There was something very powerful about seeing that.”
A new survey of nonprofit and foundation communications professionals by Gibbons’s organization suggests that groups increasingly see approaches like MacArthur’s as vital. Some principles of DEI are better understood and more reflected in their work than they were two years ago, when Communications Network first surveyed its members on the topic. But change has been halting, if nonexistent, in some areas.
“Things have changed,” Gibbons said, “but not astoundingly. Still, I think we’re on the right track.”
Among the survey’s bright spots, according to Gibbons and others at the network:
- 71 percent said they consider DEI as they develop messaging, an increase of 9 percentage points from 2019.
- 67 percent said DEI is an “explicit component” of their organization’s communications strategy, up from 57 percent.
- 56 percent reported having a “strong understanding” of DEI concepts, up from 43 percent.
The Communications Network also was encouraged by data suggesting that organizations are turning to DEI principles in their day-to-day operations as well as in strategic planning for messaging, storytelling, and other aspects of their work. “There is progress that we can build on,” said Norris West, director of strategic communications at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and co-chair of the network’s DEI Working Group. “If we can keep this trend going in the right direction, we will be on a path to building and embedding racial equity in communications work.”
West credited the protests following Floyd’s murder for prompting at least some of the change. “A lot happened in 2020,” he said. “Until we had a reckoning that put some of these issues of race right in public view, we as a nation weren’t aware of them.
West, Gibbons, and others said they were disappointed to see little change from 2019 in responses to some key questions, particularly after the past year’s sustained national focus on racial equity. The share of survey respondents who said they considered DEI when selecting people to deliver key messages actually dropped from 52 percent to 47 percent. Additionally, only 42 percent of respondents said they felt “supported” and well prepared to incorporate DEI in their work, about the same proportion as in 2019.
The chaos of the pandemic may have slowed some efforts, but the survey’s data and open-ended responses point to another challenge, said Anita Sharma, a research and strategic communications consultant with 4th Street Communications, who analyzed the survey results. The leaders and organization must invest in DEI for communications to change.
“There are some instances where organizational leadership and boards seem to be behind the forward momentum we’re seeing here,” Sharma said. “But there is perhaps some reluctance or hesitation at other organizations.”
Sarah McAfee, director of communications at the Center for Health Progress in Colorado, said an organization has to commit to DEI as a whole before its communications can authentically change. In recent years, the group, which advocates for equity in health care, has committed itself to antiracism, leading to significant change in communications operations. Among other things, the group has developed more equity-focused messaging and style guides and created staff performance metrics based on equity and inclusion principles.
McAfee said 80 percent of staff have had media training so they are comfortable to speak publicly about their own experiences with health inequities. She directs as many media inquiries as possible to colleagues or to grassroots members of the organization. “A white person who has citizenship should not be the one speaking to the media about an undocumented person trying to get health insurance,” she said.
The organization’s leaders pushed for and made such changes possible, McAfee said. “It was women of color who have led our organizational transformation,” she said. “They are the leaders and the experts, and they have fought for justice for years within our organization and within the movement as a whole. It’s really only through their grace and compassion and accountability that I know the things that I know now.”
The MacArthur Foundation has long practiced what it calls the “democratization of voices,” but its response to the George Floyd murder was the first time it invited staff members to contribute to a statement by the grant maker’s chief. Those who stepped up included the director of journalism and media, the deputy director of its Mexico office, program officers in Chicago and Nigeria, as well as a grants-management officer — not the typical foundation spokesperson. Steve Casey, the associate director of grants management, wrote of “police terrorism” and included a statement from one of his two sons, Joel. Joel saw Steve working on his draft, asked to be included, and vividly described the fear he feels as a young Black man.
The foundation has used this approach several times since, including after the March killings in Atlanta of Asian American women, when it included with Palfrey’s public response the remarks of three Asian American women leaders of grantee organizations. The statement on the Toledo killing featured a reaction from Matt DeMateo, executive director of New Life Centers of Chicagoland, that read like a poem, said Kristen Mack, MacArthur’s managing director of communications.
“We’re willing to experiment and try new things, and it has worked.”
