Commitment to do Better

Earlier this week the Idaho Nonprofit Center’s Board of Directors and I issued a statement in support of racial justice and equality. In it we pledged to fiercely and emphatically embrace diversity, equity and inclusion principles as part of our mission and our values as an organization and invited our nonprofit community to join us.

We committed to the following:

• We are going to add diversity, equity and inclusion as a strategic initiative to our 2018-2021 strategic plan, effective immediately
• We will adopt core values that state the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion
• We will lead through this challenge and share what we learn
• We are planning a series of trainings that will be made available for free to our nonprofit community
  
  

As a first step, we have already updated our strategic plan and operationalized this new initiative. Our entire Idaho Nonprofit Center team is also completing up the Wassmuth Center’s Human Rights certification course, and will be offering the opportunity to our board as well.

I strongly encourage all of you to take a look at this course. Here’s a brief excerpt from the course description for your review:

• “It provides a way for an individual to acquire deep understanding of the core values of diversity, inclusion, ethics, respect, and civility; to reflect about how those values impact work and personal life; and to decide what action can be taken, one person at a time, to bring those values to the workplace or the community.  As a final category, participants consider the role of the “Upstander,” the person who lives those values out on a daily basis.”
  

The cost is $35 per person and I’ve already found it to be incredibly valuable as we embark on this journey. Once we are certified, our organization will join a list of other businesses and organizations who have obtained their Human Rights Certification, and we hope that by sharing this opportunity that we help that list grow. Click here if you’re ready to register.

We value this content so highly that effective immediately as part of our new staff on boarding process, we will pay for new team members to complete the Human Rights Certification course.

At the Idaho Nonprofit Center we are also getting ready to deploy a series of training and learning opportunities on this important subject matter and invite you to join us. All programs and resources will be made available for free, regardless of your membership status with us. We still offer plenty of membership benefits (and discounts on programs and services) but as with COVID, racial justice, equality, human rights, diversity, equity, and inclusion are important to all of us. We hope you take advantage of the resources we can provide.

In addition, we are taking advantage of some other free resources we’ve learned about through our participation in the Human Rights Certification course and will be doing some important work at the staff level.  
To that end we will deploy a comprehensive survey to measure fairness, opportunities and resources, feeling of belonging, and other important indicators of how our team perceives the Idaho Nonprofit Center as an employer. We may not like what we learn, but whatever we learn will make us better.

We do not have all the answers, but we’re doing what we can to start asking the right questions and leading through these challenges. We’re all better for our individual and collective efforts to be better.