Our Vision
Equity in the Center envisions a future where nonprofit and philanthropic organizations adopt a Race Equity Culture focused on proactive counteraction of social inequities. We must build a future where white dominant culture is dismantled within all social sector organizations, institutional and structural racism have been eliminated at all levels of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, and race equity has been achieved within organizations, across the social sector, and in communities.
Meet Our Team
Kerrien Suarez, Executive Director
Ericka Hines, Managing Director
Kate Loving, Communications Manager
Seana Jean, Race Equity Culture Associate
Fern Carbonell, Operations Associate
Meet Our Board
Amanda Andere, CEO, Funders Together to End Homelessness
Holly Delany Cole, Director, Flexible Leadership Awards, The Haas Leadership Initiatives, Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund
Jara Dean Coffey, Director and Founder, Equitable Evaluation Initiative and Founder, Luminare Group
Carly Hare, National Director/Coalition Catalyst, CHANGE Philanthropy
Maggie Potapchuk, Founder, MP Associates
Andrew Plumley, Director of Inclusion, American Alliance of Museums
Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, Co-Director, Building Movement Project
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 an 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