Call to Action

Both people of color and white people must interrogate assumptions about how the work of nonprofits and grant makers is and can be done, and by whom. Our shared work is to dismantle the white supremacy and institutional racism on which the social sector is constructed, and create a Race Equity Culture™ that values the humanity and lived experiences of all persons equally.

 To do so, we challenge colleagues to adopt specific tactics on the levels at which racism operates:

Personal

• Decolonize your mind. Accept that white supremacy is real, and that institutional racism is practiced by people of all races
• Interrogate the dominant narrative. Understand implicit bias and your identity and role in enabling and propagating systemic racism
• Complete your own internal work. Don’t put the burden exclusively on people you perceive to be more conscious than you, usually people of color, to explain the system. Hold yourself accountable for and commit to doing work at the four levels on which racism operates

Interpersonal

• Respect the lived experience of people of color operating within white dominant culture, including your own, if you are a person of color
• Commit to building, being vulnerable to, and learning through, relationships with people of a different race, especially people of color whose voices are often marginalized
• Acknowledge the impact of race-based power differentials within organizations

Institutional

• Commit to understanding and speaking publicly on principles of race equity, and how they apply in the institutional context
• Disaggregate staff engagement, performance, and compensation data by race at all staff levels. Hold yourself and leadership accountable for this work
• Engage staff and communities of color to inform governance, decision making, and execution across organizational processes

Structural

• Be accountable, at the individual and organizational level, for dismantling personal, interpersonal, institutional and structural artifacts of white supremacy
• Publicly advocate for race equity and challenge white dominant cultural norms, including naming micro-aggressions in interpersonal and institutional contexts
• Cede power to people of color within and across teams, organizations, and systems