Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Posted by Equal Measure on June 12, 2017

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
A Statement from Equal Measure

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Almost one year ago, I wrote about the critical and urgent opportunity – the imperative – to place race, equity, and inclusion front and center in our national dialogue, and in the work of the social sector. I challenged many of us in the social sector – practitioners, funders, and movement builders in communities – to engage in productive dialogues about how to eradicate structural inequities, and to collectively identify policies and practices to break down systemic barriers built on race, gender, ethnicity, immigration, poverty, and power.

In that same call-to-action, I shared how Equal Measure, drawing upon our longstanding, deeply ingrained commitment to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, would continue to sharpen our own organizational DEI practices. Over the past year, we formalized a “business case” for DEI, making the integration of DEI practices critical to every aspect of our mission – including our engagements with clients, our thought leadership, our talent management, and our administrative operations – rather than simply a “nice thing to do.” We were guided by the objective that to talk cogently about DEI, we must be as specific as possible about how we define diversity, equity, and inclusion and how we plan to further integrate these concepts into our work. We also believed strongly that to be truly authentic about our commitment to DEI, we must be accountable – not just to ourselves, but to our clients and colleagues in the field.

Given those aims, I am pleased to share our Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In this public statement, we lay out how we define diversity, equity, and inclusion; and delineate our commitment to build, refine, and rigorously assess a series of internal and external organizational DEI practices that are central to who we are. We view this statement as both a reflection of our current endeavors, and as an aspirational roadmap. In the coming months, we will publish an overview of our newly developed DEI Metrics, which tie directly to each practice outlined in the statement. These metrics will serve as a gauge of accountability for ourselves, our Board, our clients, and our peers.

While we consider this statement as a mirror of our thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we acknowledge that we are not experts, nor can we truly ever be. As a learning organization, we can take strong stances, but also must prepare ourselves to refine our thoughts or reassess our assumptions along the way. We therefore consider this DEI Statement, and companion Metrics, as steps – albeit important ones – in a more than 30-year journey for Equal Measure. And we invite our clients and colleagues in the field to join us in this evolution.

http://www.equalmeasure.org/about/our-dei-commitment/