By Cyndi Suarez, President of Big Soul
Equity In The Center has learned many lessons in its first five years as an independent 501c3—at the level of the field, the organization, and the individual. Its leaders have taken time to reflect honestly and bravely, and to share these lessons with the field at this critical juncture of backlash on racial equity.
While there are many lessons, they can be organized around three key areas. At the top of the list is what the organization has learned about the work of advancing racial equity in the nonprofit sector. Its second most critical lesson is about the thorny aspects of leadership, particularly for Black women. The third is about the learnings that come from being a start up, in rapid growth building and modeling the Race Equity Culture™ it coined.
On the Nature of Racial Equity Work
It’s Cyclical
The main lesson about the work of racial equity is the widely shared experience of its cyclical nature. Amanda Andere, CEO of Funders Together to End Homelessness and EIC board member says, “EIC has learned this work is absolutely not linear, and in fact it is a lot of push and pull, and huge amounts of lulls and huge amounts of explosion. To keep the course on racial equity work is pretty hard.”
Andrew Plumley—senior consultant at Global Health Visions, the second employee hired by EIC as Senior Program Manager (later becoming Managing Director), agrees:
That’s one of the biggest learnings: that it is cyclical. I think it’s cyclical in nature for a number of different reasons. We take two steps forward and one step back, sometimes three. Individual leaders are going to react to that differently. Staff are going to react to that differently. The board chair is going to react to that differently. Without senior leadership on board, this work is not going to happen.
And then we’ve seen, with the murder of George Floyd in 2020, how an unfortunate and incredibly disturbing event can actually slingshot you and propel you into a much more progressive space. So you have to be ready to really make moves and take advantage of that, because there’s always going to be backslide. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re building a sustained approach, for when the times are good and when it’s a lot more difficult.
Ericka Hines, founder of Black Women Thriving and EIC’s Managing Director, puts a finer point on the experience when she says
I’ve learned so much. One thing that I’ve learned is that people want to do racial equity work and just be done. They want the 10 ingredients. I learned that people’s staying power in this work is very low, organizationally. People want race equity work to be instant gratification work. And it’s not. It’s momentum work. You have to approach this work as change. So in the same way that your organization handles change or doesn’t handle change is the same way you are going to react to racial equity work. You have to prioritize. You have to have a plan. The folks that do have a plan, the folks and the organizations who take the time to really consider racial equity work as a part of how their organization runs, those are the folks who have had that incremental but deeper change
Marcus Walton, President and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), EIC’s first major partner, sums it up well:
I’ve learned from the Equity In The Center experience that things indeed happen in cycles. The overall impact of operating in that way—in community with others who are aligned around values, purpose, and vision—actually has an exponential impact. It’s not just about advancing a very specific agenda—which we do. It’s also about a personal growth that happens, a maturity that happens—individual, interpersonal, and sector wide—an evolution.
There are Default Modes
Sean Thomas-Breitfeld—program officer on Ford’s Civic Engagement and Government team, former Co-Executive Director of the Building Movement Project, and EIC board member—notes the default modes on both sides of racial equity. First, he points out the prevalence of conversation over action in the field:
I think Equity In The Center has learned that there is a lot of appetite and interest to engage in thoughtful, deep discussion that is relational around complicated issues of identity inside of organizational systems. I think that Equity in the Center has also learned that there are real limits around what kind of change systems will tolerate. Oftentimes, making space for conversation becomes the proxy.
Second, he notes that on the other side of this reluctance to create systemic change is the antagonistic approach of those seeking change,
There is a blind spot in terms of having a strategy for building more inclusive and effective organizations. I experienced deep frustration teaching a class at NYU on DEI and having students who argued that righteousness was a replacement for strategy, for making cultural change inside of organizations. Their only strategy was to alienate white leaders. Their only strategy was to call board members racist. As an instructor, I couldn’t find the content that would shake that out of them. As a leader, I was feeling like my staff was polarizing against me. That’s why I latched on to the analysis in the book Elite Capture. That was what was swirling for me in this post-2020 moment: polarization as the default mode.
The Scope is Wide
Another learning is about the scope of racial equity work. Plumley notes the added complexities of how racial inequity shows up in people of color when he shares,
Equity work is not just white folks work. It’s everyone’s work. We see inequity in every organization that we worked with, and often some of the most difficult conversations were actually with people of color led, majority people of color, organizations. They tend to have much more generational differences, class inequity, and gender inequity than other organizations. The conversations are much more difficult, especially for Kay and me because we shared many of those identities.
Another learning around scope is about how to balance focus on the particular way racial inequities show up against Black people with how they do in others, particularly indigenous communities. Hines explains,
One of the things that Equity In The Center has learned in the last five years is that when we talk about race equity, it is different from talking about anti- blackness. When we talk about race equity, we are really talking about all races and ethnicities who have experienced bad treatment. Learning that and nuancing our own understanding has led to it seeping down into our own practices.
I have seen Equity In The Center go from, “We’re going to do a land acknowledgement out of respect,” to “Why are we doing this land acknowledgement? How does what we are saying actually fit with our values? Who are the leaders in this area that we should be listening to? What more do we need to learn?” to, “I think we actually want to consider how we contribute some portion of our money into land back. What does that look like?” It’s a very powerful lesson to me—as a person who was there from the beginning, as a person who works with them, as a person who sits on the board.
Financing it is Challenging
Finally, the economic challenges of racial equity are very real, on both the organizational and field level. For example, when EIC priced the national community of practice for racial equity practitioners, DEPn (Deep Equity Practitioners Network), at $10,000, it found that most participants could not cover it from their organizational budget, and even when they could, many could not get their supervisor’s approval for it. So EIC lowered the fee to $5,000.
As a participant in DEPn, Dr Raquel Gutierrez—founder and CEO of Blue Agave Partners, an EIC advisor, and a member of EIC’s team of seasoned racial equity practitioners—says,
I think one thing that’s a challenge, and that the organization is learning right now, is that capitalizing equity work—there’s a contradiction with that. It’s the first time that they’ve charged for a community of practice in that way. It’s not a program. It’s actually building relationships with each other and supporting each other in the work as a race equity practitioner. So I could feel their struggle in the conversations leading up to it.
EIC launched with a grant from the Annie E Casey Foundation, and four other major foundations joined in support over the first five years. However, its origin story (see the first article in this series) is one of co-creating with the field, which narrows what it can consider its intellectual property. It has also focused on being responsive to the field and its practitioners, and oftentimes those who needed support were not the ones that could pay for it.
Plumley explains,
We’ve had an interesting challenge from the get go because we have always said we are not consultants. We’re not going to integrate other people’s IP and try to package it to sell. Frankly, taking people’s work and then their clients— we’re never going to do something like that. So we’ve got trainings. We can do cohort experiences. But the real, true cost is what has been the most difficult. We can either do it at cost or find folks to help supplement some of that cost. And that’s been our real business model for quite a long time.
As Thomas-Breitfeld points out, “The client base for Equity In The Center is equally dependent on philanthropic dollars as Equity In The Center is.” And, as Kerrien Suarez, EIC’s President and CEO, notes, this is a challenge that many capacity building organizations serving nonprofits face,
Developing a business model for capacity building as an organization has been a longstanding challenge in the social sector. I have yet to find someone who says, “I have the answer for capacity building.” I think the race equity focus ups the ante on the challenges to capacity building because so many people have yet to be convinced that race equity capacity building is a discipline, so to speak, in and of itself, because racism and white supremacy tells us that race is not a topic worthy of intensive investment and support. So that challenges our ability to raise money for race equity capacity building.
Solutions Are Emerging
EIC has learned what works in addressing some of these racial equity challenges. To address the cyclical nature of racial equity, it allows workshop participants to take the same workshop repeatedly. It also hosts the same or similar conversations repeatedly.
It has also found that people need constant coaching, so coaching has become a central aspect of the work. Further, it has seen that the best coaching and learning happens in cohorts. Niki Jagpal, EIC’s former executive vice president, shared,
One of the biggest things we’re learning is the value of coaching. We run cohorts. In a cohort space, we may have, let’s say, six organizations, and they’ve each sent in a few members of their team. Part of the cohort learning opportunity is community peer space and learning from people who are at different stages of the work, so they can see where they’re headed.
However, modeling what a racial equity organization looks, acts, and feels like is one of the most important contributions EIC is making in the field. People need models, and the racial equity organization is more likely to have the resources and experience to offer a new model.
On a personal level, a sustainable work mode is essential for longterm leadership. Plumley observes, “I’ve learned how to build rest into my practice. You’ve got to be in this for the long haul, and without rest you won’t be able to sustain yourself, sustain your organizations. So sometimes it’s okay to say no.”
On Leadership
The Need for Analysis, Right Relationship, and Grace
The second big area of learning for EIC is leadership, particularly the commitment and skill required to support a Black woman leader. Andere shares her experience of learning to be in right relationship with Suarez,
I’ve learned what it looks like to support another Black woman leader in her own unique ways. I saw the board do that in a way that is strategic and aligned, while also giving a lot of grace. I think, actually, a lot of boards when they start to do equity work, that’s what they trip up over: there’s too much oversight and they don’t let the person be human. I’ve also seen it on the other side where there’s lack of accountability, so the organization doesn’t do well. I’ve learned how you can hold your leader accountable, and also be in right relationship. Right relationship is about having a discussion, a clear understanding about what your relationship is and what it isn’t, and that it’s centered on humanity rather than the transactional approach to work. It’s very transformational.
Maggie Potapchuk, lead of MP Associates Consulting and EIC board member, admits that as EIC was supporting other organizations going through racial justice change processes, it was going through its own similar challenges. She shares,
That tension that was occurring in many different nonprofits was also present at EIC. Staff focused on getting their needs met, instead of looking at what’s the mission of the organization? What’s my contribution? How am I daily operationalizing those values? At times there was not accountability for staff doing that. A fork happened and Kay had to make decisions, as a Black woman leader. What are the stereotypes in terms of that? What are the supports or obstacles that are in place? There was a different pressure, ways she had to do double time in terms of protection, of herself and the organization. The board really tried during that time to support Kay as she went through that process. It was the most difficult challenge so far.
Plumley identifies the key factor that made the difference in how EIC addressed this challenge—a practitioner board with racial justice analysis. He says,
Our board members have seen those dynamics take place outside of Equity In The Center, in all of the other work that they’ve been doing. So they could name what was happening quickly, and didn’t actually need Kay to say it because we saw it.
Plumley continues, noting the wider, cultural, inter-generational gap in which these dynamics play out in nonprofit organizations,
The social contract between workers and employment is broken. There’s a mismatch in expectations about what a workplace should and could be. Millennials—including my age and younger millennials—and Gen Z’s have higher expectations about what they’re looking for in a professional environment. I think there’s a misunderstanding of what equity actually looks like in practice. It ends up being much more inequitable in some of the actions that younger folks are doing right now against their own leader, who might be Black or Brown. What is happening inside of the organization just does not make sense. It’s just fundamentally wrong, and she needs to be backed up. Or, what’s happening with a partner is fundamentally fucked up, and we need to figure out how to help her assert the value or step away.
Hines, who wrote the first report on the challenges of Black women in nonprofit leadership, “Black Women Thriving,” says there is a very particular Black woman leader experience,
Robert Livingston’s 2012 study, “Can an Agentic Black Woman Get Ahead?”, found that if you take white women, Black men, and Black women, and put them in positions of leadership, essentially more grace is given to white women and Black men if they make a mistake in their leadership than is given to Black women. The descent from, you were a leader to now you’re no longer a leader, is faster. That has to do with whiteness and patriarchy. It is absolutely distinct.
At Equity In The Center, we have tried to extend that grace to the leadership to say, “Okay, what’s happening? What’s going on? How can we support you through this? How can we support having a better process?” That has come through intentionality, and having folks on the board who are in the same position.
Speaking for herself about her leadership experience, EIC’s President and CEO Kerrien Suarez shares,
For me, the biggest lessons are about what it means to lead an organization as a Black woman, the level of disrespect that Black women leaders are subjected to, just as a matter of doing general business. How people treat you. How they speak to you disrespectfully. There have been things said to me by team members that I would have never imagined. I’ve had those same disrespectful things said by collaborators in the space. The extent to which we’re disbelieved. Attempts to put us in our place: “How dare you operate in your power and make decisions and say things to me definitively, in your role as leader.”
The same unrealistic expectations of me as a Black woman are held by other Black people, other people of color—that I be a superwoman, that I, on the one hand, give you more than any other institution or employer, by your own admission, has ever given you, and, on the other hand, you will absolutely demand that I give you more. How dare I not give you more? So a number of things have come together.
I have a phenomenal board, and none of any of that came from my board, which does distinguish me from a lot of folks, and I’m very grateful for that.
Jagpal understood these dynamics and that mitigating them was central to her role. She shared,
For me the question that [was] front and center for me all the time when I’m working with Kay is, “How do I show up in authentic and real solidarity and support of a Black woman in a leadership role?” For me it’s really practical. Being hyper vigilant in meetings about how her voice and perspective are being handled, received, responded to. Being able to take specific relationships or pieces of work off of her plate, where it’s abundantly clear that it is emotionally extremely taxing and is making demands of her that I know would not be made of somebody who presented and identified differently. Then just being open to feedback.
Carly Hare, CEO of Headwaters Foundation and EIC board member, sums it well: “You need someone to advocate for the Executive Director.”
Start Up: Growth, Culture, Role
The third learning area for EIC is around the work of launching an organization. The start up phase of any type of organization can be challenging, even more so when the main goal is building and modeling the Race Equity Culture™ it exists to advance. In fact, whether or not to build an organization around this model was one of the first formation conversations.
Potapchuk reflects, “I think we didn’t know until we got into it, some of the challenges—from paperwork, to dealing with staff issues, to setting up policies and practices.”
Walton anticipated these challenges and as the leader of GEO, a funder network focused on racial equity, he explored a partnership relationship with EIC early on. He shares,
I offered Equity In The Center the opportunity to not have to deal with the challenges of management and organization. I think they’ve learned the complexity of what it takes to actually institutionalize that work and not just operationalize. Personally, I wanted to see them just be able to thrive over the last five years without the burden of institutionalizing. They chose the path of moving forward in a way that allows them to serve nonprofits, which GEO does not focus on. So we focused on programmatic work, rather than operationally as partners. We did cohort experiences.
The most challenging aspect of starting up and building culture was hiring the right staff. Hines says,
Some of the challenges have been around, how do we find the folks we need to do the work? What should we emphasize? And, when you become a member of the staff, was that the right emphasis for us to have? Yes, I need you to be values aligned, and I need you to be competent. I don’t think we’re alone in that.
Jagpal, whose role it was to focus on operations and culture, agreed that creating the right structure and roles and then finding the right people to fill those and supporting them was very challenging. She shared,
The biggest challenge is staffing, because of how much time it’s taken to grapple with it. We’re in a relatively solid place now, and we still have a ways to go figuring out what the right staffing structure is. Also, what does accountability look like in a way that isn’t punitive and top down, that feels more relational and equitable?
Suarez puts a finer point on it, overlaying the additional challenges that come with hiring staff that can follow the leadership of a Black women leader. She confides,
We understand that when hiring folks at Equity In The Center, they have to have a robust analysis of what it means to work at an organization led by a Black woman. They should understand how structural racism, anti-blackness, and misogynoir operate broadly in society, and be willing to explore how does that show up within our organization.
Hare sums it up: “There was a mismatch of skills and growth. These brought up issues of culture and conflict. We had to ask ourselves, ‘How are we going to handle that?’” Thankfully, the organization had practices for addressing these very challenges.
Plumley says it’s important to bring in external facilitation. He says,
We always say, “Bring in external facilitation.” So we brought in external facilitation to hold space, to have meaningful, difficult conversations about what was actually taking place. There was a lot of learning. But the responsibility was unduly placed on Kay, as a Black woman leader, to teach while being attacked. So, without support from the board, without support from external facilitation, that wouldn’t have taken place.
Potapchuk points out the importance of having clear values. She notes,
It helped that we created the values early on in the process. It’s about pro- Blackness. It’s about decolonization. There was still a steep learning curve about what those mean. We were really trying to think about what that would look like, both in our strategies and how we are in relationship.
These conversations led to the Suarez’s decision to pull back on some of the roles that had been created and rethink how to structure the organization to best fulfill its mission “to shift mindsets, practices and systems in the social sector to center race equity and build a Race Equity Culture™.”
Plumley recalls the mutual realization that a significant staff shift needed to happen. He says,
After that situation in 2021, we really leaned out the team. There were folks that were not going to get their expectations met. It was clear to both parties that it was actually much healthier for them to go try to find a place where they could get what they needed, because Equity In The Center was not going to provide that.
We also learned over time that working with a leaner team means more work, but if that work is done by more experienced staff, we’re often going to get a better outcome. So that was the trade off they were willing to make at the time. It felt like the new team that we put in place was going to be supportive of one another. It could be direct about working through organizational issues without the extra work of having to manage and take a lot of time to facilitate conversations, to teach folks the proper analysis needed to work in a Black woman-led organization.
These staff issues are related to the larger and still open learning question for EIC: What role should it play in the field of racial equity?
Hare concludes, “We still are struggling with this.” EIC is not alone in this, as racial equity groups think about how to remain safe and effective in these times.
Hare wants to see EIC leaning more into its network structure, “not trying to do all the things, but building a network to have all the things.”
Equity In The Center is well-positioned to serve as a core network node in the racial equity field because it has the one thing that is most important and hardest to build: the trust of the field. Potapchuk observes,
EIC really practices and operationalizes its values. The roles that it has played with DEPn, the network of practitioners, says something. It’s a supportive administrative role. We’re all nice to each other, but it’s not like competition isn’t there. It’s not like tension isn’t there. To be able to hold that space and have folks trust the organization, especially when it comes to resource distribution. I think that speaks loudly as to how Equity In The Center has built a reputation for being an organization that works with integrity.
Cyndi Suarez is president of Big Soul, a creative knowledge firm. She is the author of The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics, in which she outlines a new theory and practice of liberatory power. She is a former president and editor-in-chief at Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ). Suarez has over 30 years of experience in the nonprofit sector and has worked as a strategy and innovation consultant with a focus on networks and platforms for social movements. She is currently writing a book that offers a new framework for social change. Learn more at cyndisuarez.com.
