Diversity

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion: Action Toolkit for Organizations: "This toolkit includes five assessments that focus on governance, mission-driven programs, partnerships, communication, and advocacy. Each assessment allows you to reflect on your organizational practices and identify areas for improvement.

Charting the Journey: "We’re at the crossroads of transformation where momentum for racial equity can yield more just and equitable outcomes. Organizations are taking action and want deeply to be a part of the change but recognize that change begins on the inside first.

Not all forms of diversity are visible identities. In the case of neurodiversity, the differences between people stems from variations in cognitive functions around sociability, learning abilities, and other intellectual processes.

Many nonprofit service providers would gladly work themselves out of a job if solutions could be found for the most pressing issues of our time. However, we are generally so overextended just treating the symptoms of social and environmental problems that it can be difficult to engage effectively, if at all, in changing public policy and other structural conditions. The result is a nonprofit sector that too often does for people, rather than pursuing social change with them, which can reinforce barriers to advancing equity. 

Equity and inclusion are at the center of a nonprofit’s mission. What can nonprofits do to build strong partnerships among the communities served and donors? How does an organization expand its fundraising strategy to involve donors who may not have been included in the past? What are the ways all supporters can feel a sense of belonging as we work to create a stronger community?    

Over the last two years, the learning and action network Learning for Equity: A Network for Solutions NC (LENS-NC) has focused on increasing educational equity for low-income students and students of color with diagnosed and undiagnosed learning differences. The network is a partnership between nine organizations across NC, MDC, and the Oak Foundation Learning Differences Programme.

The American novelist Joan Didion once wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

In many ways Didion was right. Stories may not seem like a basic survival need, but our brains naturally tell us stories as a way to give structure and meaning to our lives.

Renewing the Commitment: An ADA Compliance Guide for Nonprofits - The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 ensures the civil rights of people with physical and mental disabilities to have equal access to, and equal opportunity to enjoy, the services and activities of the public, private, and social sectors.

Socioeconomic status is not a protected legal class or group under anti-discrimination laws that govern U.S. workplaces. Moreover, it could likely prove difficult to define class discrimination (which manifests as obvious or subtle expressions of speech, education level, personal wealth, or other indicators of status), but it remains a cultural issue in workplaces and in the hiring process. Below are resources to help define the problem and articles laying out steps to counteract the effect of this bias.

Defining Classism