Equity & Inclusion Auditing
Our goal is to provide your organization's staff and board members with a basic roadmap for making concrete and doable changes that would move both the organization and the field forward to advance racial equity, while maintaining the collaboration and cohesion of key stakeholders.
We began the process by establishing three lines of inquiry that would undergird the audit:
- Has your company established racial equity as an organizational priority in internal policy documents? How does it evaluate its racial equity work and monitor progress towards achieving internal racial equity? How is staff/leadership accountable internally and to whom, and how is your company accountable externally?
- How is racial equity reflected internally in your company’s governance, language and communications, policies, culture, operations and practices? How effective are these elements in advancing racial equity internally?
- How does your company further racial equity externally among its membership through its communications, programs and practices? What is the quality of those elements and what impact are they having?
To answer these questions, We will need to review internal equity policies, procedures, and programs, as well as its website and other field-oriented communications. We also will conduct two surveys, one targeting stakeholder member institutions and another targeting foundation peer groups working in a variety of sectors unrelated to arts and culture. We will interview a diverse set of representatives of your company's staff, board, funders, learning group members and “un-connected member organizations.”
We then will prepare a detailed summary report, including an analysis of key themes, recommendations for incorporating action steps into administrative and programmatic areas, and a compilation of racial equity programs of similar organizations.
What does it take to undertake an effective audit?
- A willingness to open the organization to outside scrutiny – the ability to bare its soul.
- The ability to both take decisive leadership and take direction from its constituency.
- A deep commitment from the organizational leadership to take this work on over the long haul because cultural and systemic change takes time.
