IT’S TIME FOR MEANINGFUL CHANGE IN WORKPLACES AND COMMUNITIES

It’s been two years since widespread anti-racist pledges were made by institutional leaders. If you’re unsure of where to go from here or wondering what else your organization could be doing to operationalize racial equity, Charting the Journey: Strategies to Guide Racial Equity Organizational Change is for you.

DEMYSTIFYING THE RACIAL EQUITY TRANSFORMATION PROCESS

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.

The work of building healthy, just and liberatory organizations and communities takes intentional action and sustained commitment. It also requires disrupting norms, truth-telling, accountability and a willingness to be open and share lessons learned along the way.

In the spirit of ongoing learning and fostering an ecosystem of sharing to further the work of building equity and justice-driven institutions and organizations, Charting the Journey:

• Publicly shares CURE’s Racial Equity Organizational Change (REOC) framework, process and lessons learned from five years of guiding nonprofit leaders to mobilize resources and be accountable for racial equity in their workplaces and communities served
• Provides a roadmap for implementing assessment, learning and action planning activities that engages your entire organization in a transformative process that surfaces tensions and builds collaborative spaces for visioning and action
• Offers concrete recommendations for embedding racial equity across organizational operations including culture, programs and services, hiring and retention strategies, community partnerships and contracting and grantmaking
• Includes case studies, performance indicators and insights to move racial equity beyond concepts and conversations to everyday practice

WHAT IS RACIAL EQUITY ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE?

Racial Equity Organizational Change (REOC) is a carefully sequenced systems-thinking approach that has been used to guide CURE’s nonprofit and public sector clients through racial equity transformation processes. Because racial equity is as much a practice as it is a value, vision and goal, organizational change work in the service of racial equity:

• Can’t be about checking off items on a to-do list.
• Goes beyond Traditional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) approaches to challenge the status quo and uproot underlying harmful beliefs and practices that produce racial inequities.
• Is non-linear and very much about relationship-building and learning to move at the speed of trust.
• Stirs emotions, excites, and sometimes leads to frustrations and disappointments when organizations are not willing to go far enough.

Because of these realities, racial equity organizational change has to be carefully planned and facilitated to support truth-telling, transparency, accountability and care to avoid imposing additional harms and burdens on Black and Brown staff and communities.

WHAT IS THE REOC FRAMEWORK?

CURE’s Racial Equity Organizational Change (REOC) framework and process helps individuals and organizations move toward meaningful racial equity by focusing their efforts on four key domains:

These domains also serve as the basis for important actions that should be part of any transformation process, including an organizational assessment, formation and training of a racial equity working group and action planning.

The guide contains both foundational and practical actions to be implemented across each of the four domains. For each domain, we outline:

• key concepts and practices associated with the domain
• ways we have seen organizations struggle to practice racial equity
• target outcomes and specific recommendations on how to make meaningful progress and change towards transformative racial equity

WHO SHOULD ACCESS THE GUIDE? 

Charting the Journey should be accessed by any individual or organization seeking to deepen internal and external racial equity. The guide offers guidance to both organizational leaders and those tasked with operationalizing racial equity commitments, including those in newly-formed equity officer roles. While the guide focuses on nonprofits, CURE has applied REOC-related processes and tools in diverse settings including government agencies and schools—making the contents of the guide applicable to changemakers across a variety of institutions and organizations.

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