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At the end of 2020, NC Early Childhood Foundation (NCECF) announced that we were in the process of building out an Equity Action Plan which would create metrics to drive targeted organizational change. More than a year has passed, and we are taking this opportunity to check in on the progress.
As we work towards being more equitable in our work, we plan to publicly share our successes and setbacks in the hopes of being useful to others. We do so with the intention to strive to do better and be better so that we can create more equitable outcomes for young children and guarantee that every child has genuine access to opportunities to achieve their full potential.
Organizational Progress
1. Develop a written racial equity plan with clear actions, timelines, people responsible for each action, indicators of progress and processes for monitoring and evaluation.
NCECF used a modified version of the Coalition of Communities of Color’s Tool for Organizational Self-Assessment Related to Racial Equity to gather initial data on the practices and procedures which drive organizational change. Staff and the board of directors completed a self-assessment that laid the groundwork for what we should prioritize and developed our Equity Action Plan (condensed version in the image below) that provides clear actions, timelines, and the people responsible for completing each of the priority areas. This beneficial plan was easy to reference and kept us on track.
2. Incorporate a mission and impact statement that addresses racial equity
NCECF staff and board of directors formally went through a strategic planning process with a major outcome resulting in updating and formally adopting a mission and vision statement. We wanted to be clear that our guiding principles lift up strategies that specifically work to improve outcomes for every child in North Carolina through a comprehensive and equity-first approach.
New mission statement: To marshal North Carolina’s great people, ideas, and achievements to ensure equitable access to opportunity and success for every child by the end of third grade.
New vision statement: Each North Carolina child has a strong foundation for life-long health, education, and well-being supported by a comprehensive, equitable birth-to-eight ecosystem.
3. Post materials in languages other than English
Based on survey results of NCECF’s newsletter and social media platforms, a majority of our readership and audience are nonprofit advocates at the state and local levels, and state governmental agencies serving birth-through-age-five with their primary language as English. Because of these results, we opted to hold off on posting all materials in languages other than English unless there is a specific need.
An example of where we do offer both English and Spanish translation is the Summer Learning Toolkit because the audience is program providers and staff that are directly communicating with parents and we want the materials to be more accessible to a larger and more diverse population.
Some of the ways we have made our website and meetings more accessible and inclusive beyond language are by:
- Offering a text into life-like speech conversion process of all of our blogs using Amazon Polly. This is beneficial for blind and low-vision users and people living with dyslexia to give an additional way to access our blogs through listening.
- Adding alternative texts to WordPress images to help people with visual impairments understand pictures and other graphical content.
- Conducting a Performance, Accessibility, and Security (PAS) Audit with Unity Web Agency to identify any high-level accessibility issues that are present and will inform our future branding and style guide.
- Creating an internal Inclusive Meeting Checklist (e.g. when sending the invitation to the meeting, ask how you can make the meeting more accessible and comfortable for attendees, giving attendees the opportunity to express any needs or requests (translation services, close-captioning, dietary preferences); diversity in race, gender, perspectives and backgrounds of the facilitators and panelists, etc.).
4. Review existing items/policies (e.g. HR policy, professional development allocation, office environment, data collection)
Reviewing and updating our existing policies is an ongoing process – our internal policies and procedures must reflect our outward-facing commitment to racial equity. Some examples of updates made include:
- Employee handbook – gender-inclusive language; adding equity in our core values to ensure that we keep racial equity at the forefront of our work; institution of a floating holiday to ensure staff has access to celebrations, traditions, and volunteer opportunities that are important to them.
- Listing salaries in job descriptions – promotes transparency and reduces racial and gender disparities in wages.
- Updates to new board member orientation – incorporated a section on the history of racial equity at NCECF and affirm that all new board members understand the shared language used and our Commitment to Racial Equity.
Some of the areas we are planning to take a racial equity lens into this year are reviewing board and committee charters, revamping board member recruitment and retention policies, and determining sustainable approaches for allocating time and professional development to racial equity.
5. Collect demographic data
As part of NCECF’s culture of transparency and accountability, we released two years’ worth of data — 2021 and 2022 — that reflect the demographic makeup of NCECF’s board of directors and staff. We recognize that individuals’ perspectives are shaped by a host of factors, including their demographic identities — race, gender and sexuality, geography, etc. Now that we have baseline data on the current makeup of our board and staff, we can make informed decisions in areas where voices are not represented. A link to the demographic data and more information about the reflections can be found here.
6. Written policy or formal practice regarding the collection of race and ethnicity data; have a Minority, Women-Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) policy and routinely collect data on MWBE utilization
The Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) is a certification process that increases opportunities for historically underutilized businesses (e.g., at least 51 percent owned and controlled by one or more minority persons or socially and economically disadvantaged individuals) to gain contracts for city and state Requests for Proposals/Applications. Currently, only one of the consultants that we work with is certified MWBE. We looked into the certification to see if this was a viable request for finding future contractors/consultants for NCECF. We discovered the process to be time-consuming and requires an extensive list of documentation to begin the application process. We view this as a barrier to entry and decided that we will need to do more research or find a different certification process that is more easily accessible before formally adopting one.
7. Written procedures to increase the recruitment, retention and promotion of people of color and hiring to address racial and ethnic inequities, prioritizing the hiring for racial and gender diversity
Based on the results of NCECF’s demographic data, our staff is majority white and 100 percent female. We are acutely aware that we are nowhere near representative of the rich diversity in the state of North Carolina. One of the ways we are combatting this was by developing Best Practices to Improve Hiring at NCECF which includes lessons learned from a previous hiring process and what NCECF internally can do better to reach our goal of hiring to address racial and ethnic inequities. Some of the recommendations include:
- Paying for more specific hiring boards and services that are geared towards Black, Indigenous, People of Color.
- More outreach to partners, board members, and individuals in our network (e.g. phone calls, email, in-person) for more support and help with outreach outside of our usual circles.
- Developing an assessment/scorecard about the components we are looking for in a candidate for a more objective comparison.
- Increasing the timeline for accepting applications.
Reflection
As we reflect on the strides NCECF has made with the Equity Action Plan, we are encouraged by what we have achieved and are aware that there is a long road ahead that will take more than a lifetime of dedication and hard work so that one day, racial identity will no longer serve as a predictor of one’s life outcomes. At NCECF, we remain committed to racial equity and extend the invitation once again for other organizations to witness our journey, hold us accountable, and commit themselves to work through their own challenges to transform themselves and their organizations so that we can all create more equitable outcomes for young children.