The Equity Continuum Toolkit offers case studies and tools to help organizations advance racial equity and impact

Take the next step on your equity journey

Summer Search harnessed data about staff and the young people they mentor and support, leading to shifts in program delivery, partnerships and internal culture.

Mathematica, the social policy research organization, undertook a multi-year strategic DEI plan to deepen an equity focus across research projects and services.

Meyer Memorial Trust, based in Oregon, has transformed its grantmaking, asset management, and more, as part of the foundation’s deepening commitment to racial justice.

DEFINING EQUITY

Organizations can counteract the inequities that permeate our society

Equity is defined by PolicyLink as just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.

Advancing equity means counteracting racial and economic barriers and systemic exclusions (historic and current) that prevent people from realizing their potential — explore other definitions.

Equity work…

Increasing organizational focus on equity is an ongoing, multi-year journey. There is no single “right” destination or a universally “right” starting point, and no perfect sequence or mix of internal and external work.

… can lead to impact

Research shows that leaders of color have the strategic capacity to change narratives and mobilize social change organizations. Greater diversity among leaders can, for instance, increase capital funding in school districts, which can in turn improve educational outcomes.

"We had to look ourselves in the mirror and realize that despite our best intentions and articulated beliefs, we were perpetuating some of the oppressive systems that we were trying to break."
Anne Eidelman Blue Engine
“We’re working against 400 years of history. This is an ongoing effort that needs to be engaged with a lot of intentionality and urgency over the long haul. Maintaining that dynamic is a very significant challenge.”
Clotilde Perez-Bode DedeckerCommunity Foundation of Greater Buffalo
“This journey has been as much about unlearning as it has been learning. We need to ask ourselves this question at every decision point: Am I perpetuating oppression or am I dismantling it?”
Lindsay Hill Raikes Foundation

ADVANCING EQUITY

Take the next step on your equity journey

The Equity Continuum Toolkit is intended to help organizations make progress across the seven dimensions below.

For a definition of each dimension, hover over the box. Click to explore case studies, tools and more.

Mission & Vision

Embed values and principles of inclusion, diversity and equity within mission and vision statements
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Theory of Change

Set goals and strategies to achieve more equitable community outcomes and partner with constituents throughout planning and implementation
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Programs & Activities

Center equity in program design and structures, programmatic practices, staffing, messaging and more
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Evaluation & Learning

Measure progress towards equity in partnership with communities using accessible, culturally appropriate metrics and learning methods
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Operations

Foreground equity in operations such as HR & talent management; marketing, communications & community engagement; procurement, facilities & financial management
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Governance

Engage leadership and board to drive an equity focus and ensure they are genuinely reflective of, and connected to, the communities they serve
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Culture

Demonstrate and reinforce values of diversity, inclusion and equity throughout the organization’s “stories”, symbols, rituals and structures
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DATA IS FOUNDATIONAL TO EQUITY

Organizations should consult both quantitative and qualitative data to understand and respond to community needs.

PolicyLink and USC’s National Equity Atlas is America’s most detailed report card on racial and economic equity, community by community. Likewise, Listen4Good helps organizations develop and use survey, interview and other community feedback tools.

Illustrative Data Approaches
Explore case studies of organizations advancing racial equity and impact

Organizational equity work sometimes has legal and compliance implications.

Legal Considerations

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CASE STUDY

Summer Search

Beginning in 1990, Summer Search has provided mentoring, summer experiential learning, and other support to young people during their critical transitions from high school to post-secondary education to launching a fulfilling career. Since its founding, Summer Search has served 8,000 young people across five major US cities, mostly people of color who are first-generation college students.

Racial equity has always been an essential driver of Summer Search’s work. 97% of Summer Search students identify as people of color, and 91% are first-generation college students. Summer Search sees its program as “supporting students in navigating the systemic barriers to success so they can achieve economic equity and a life of purpose.” However, in assessing its programming, Summer Search realized that students and staff did not always feel comfortable or supported, especially when it came to issues of race and identity.

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Mathematica

CASE STUDY

Mathematica

Mathematica is a research, technology, data analytics, and consulting firm that partners with federal, state, and local government agencies; businesses; foundations and NGOs with the goal of using data to improve public well-being. For more than 50 years, Mathematica’s work has informed policies and programs around the world and guided strategic decisions across issue areas including health, education, child welfare, nutrition, employment, criminal justice, and climate change.

Over the course of the company’s equity journey, a number of initiatives have increased diverse representation among staff, and ensured that research projects and services are viewed through an equity lens. Continuing to expand its DEI commitment, Mathematica is embarking on a multi-year strategic DEI plan led by Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer Dr. Dawnavan Davis and her team, intended to grow both the internal foundation and the external reach of the company’s commitment to equity.

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Low Income Investment Fund

CASE STUDY

Meyer Memorial Trust

Founded in 1982, Meyer Memorial Trust (Meyer) has granted $940 million to over 3,500 organizations in Oregon and Southwest Washington. Meyer engages in strategic grantmaking, commissions research, and supports policy advocacy across issues including education, housing, and the environment. 

Over the past ten years, Meyer has transformed itself across several dimensions to reflect a deeper organizational commitment to racial justice and a vision for a “flourishing and equitable Oregon.” The most recent chapters of the organization’s equity journey have been led by President and CEO Michelle J. DePass, who left this role in 2022. Reflecting on the organization’s equity journey, DePass said, “it has encompassed everything from programs to personnel to finance to performance.”

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San Francisco Foundation

Data is foundational to equity

Organizations can use both quantitative and qualitative data to establish goals, design programs, reflect on progress, and course correct, as needed.

A few notable examples:

Quantitative

Qualitative

  • The UN Commission on the Status of Women charted a path towards gender equality, with an accompanying photo essay exhibited at the United Nations Headquarters, highlighting key milestones in the women’s rights movement
  • Prior to developing its racial equity strategy in 2015, The San Francisco Foundation gathered extensive grantee and community input through VOICE listening sessions
  • The Education Trust-West developed Data Equity Walks to bring data directly to the stakeholders most impacted by educational inequities. The activity allows any size audience to engage with education data and discuss equity issues. The supporting toolkit is designed to help organizations plan similar experiences with their local stakeholders
  • Findings from interviews with African-American male residents of San Francisco explored experiences of HIV, access to care and issues of stigma (synthesis by Public Equity Group, with support from students at Harvard Law School)

Legal Considerations for Equity Work

Many policies, practices and communications described in this toolkit have legal implications. If you choose to implement changes within your organization in areas such as staffing, leadership, governance, and others, they may implicate legal risks. Given the complex issues that may impact your organization’s decisions, you may want to consider engaging someone who is skilled in human resources, employment law and/or legal matters. These experts can help you evaluate how these and other issues impact your diversity practices and can help guide your journey.
 
Data privacy laws continue to evolve. If your organization is collecting, holding or disseminating data about people (demographic, workplace, personal, etc), you should consult legal counsel regarding compliance.

Choose an equity dimension

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

Low Income Investment Fund

With total assets of more than $575 million for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, LIIF has invested over $2.5 billion in facilities and programs that have benefited millions of people with the aim of helping low-income people participate more fully in the American economy.

In 2020, LIIF adopted new mission and vision language: “Everyone in the United States should benefit from living in a community of opportunity, equity and well-being. LIIF mobilizes capital and partners to achieve this vision for people and communities.” LIIF also commits itself to fostering communities of equity, opportunity and well-being. As of July 2020, LIIF had invested $1.4 billion to build 82,000 homes for 231,000 people; $168 million to create 273,000 child-care slots benefiting 870,000 people; $686 million to create 98,000 spaces at schools benefiting 313,000 people; and $438 million to create 38 million square feet of community space to benefit 809,000 people.

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Youth Speaks

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

The San Francisco Foundation

Founded in 1948, The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF) is one of the largest community foundations in the US, serving over 4.4M people across 5 Bay Area counties, with over $1.5B in total assets and over $200M in annual grantmaking.

TSFF’s mission had always been to improve life for Bay Area residents, but it lacked an explicit acknowledgement of the Bay Area’s high levels of racial and economic inequity. When Fred Blackwell joined TSFF as CEO in 2014, he began talking about racial equity as a new “north star” for the organization. This led to a series of large public meetings in diverse low-income communities, and a series of consultative sessions with local experts, aimed at designing a new strategy centered around racial equity. Over the subsequent two years, TSFF engaged in an iterative process with staff, grantees, board members, donors, community leaders, and outside consultants to arrive at its new “equity agenda”.

Racial equity became an explicit and central part of the organization’s mission statement: “Together with community leaders, nonprofits, and donors, we are committed to advancing racial equity and economic inclusion to ensure that everyone in the Bay Area has a chance to attend a good school, get a good job, live in a safe and affordable home, and have a strong political voice.”

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The Bridgespan Group

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

Youth Speaks

Founded in 1996, Youth Speaks is a national nonprofit dedicated to amplifying the voices of young people via the written and spoken word. To that end, the organization hosts local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, and reading series and provides a comprehensive slate of literary arts education programs.

Youth Speaks’ North Star changed from being “youth-centered” to “youth-driven”. According to executive director Cristy Johnston Limon, this was a subtle but significant shift from “designing programming for youth to designing programming with youth.” Youth Speaks reframed its mission to empower the communities it served–primarily young people of color.

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Reading Partners

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

The Bridgespan Group

The Bridgespan Group, headquartered in Boston, MA, was founded in 1999 as an advisory and management consulting service for non-profit and philanthropic organizations. The organization has established additional offices in San Francisco, New York, Mumbai and Johannesburg. Bridgespan strives to strengthen the ability of mission-driven organizations and philanthropists to achieve breakthrough results in addressing society’s most important challenges and opportunities.

Bridgespan’s mission is to work to build a better world by strengthening the ability of mission-driven organizations and philanthropists to achieve breakthrough results in addressing society’s most important challenges and opportunities. Bridgespan’s vision for a society characterized by equity and justice manifests as a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Bridgespan’s stated values also reflect a more conscious focus on DEI. These values include:

  • Impact – using an intentionally anti-racist approach to its work
  • Collaboration – seeking proximity to, partnership with, and to learn from experts and communities
  • Candor – cultivating an awareness of the potential role of the organization and individuals in perpetuating racism
  • Respect – using an asset-based approach to its work with communities of color
    Passion – focusing relentlessly and bravely on a vision of justice

In a recent essay, Bridgespan co-founder, Jeff Bradach, explains Bridgespan’s approach to placing racial equity at the center of its work, and describes the (still nascent) journey that he and other white colleagues have undertaken to grasp the significance of race in the work they do. The Bridgespan journey to date has been characterized by adopting a racial-equity lens in its advisory work; centering equity in the design of its work; rigorously examining the role of race and racism in its research and analysis; and ensuring that clients understand the implications of their choices for communities of color.

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Blue Engine

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

Reading Partners

Reading Partners, based in Oakland, CA, began as a one-on-one tutoring program in 2001 to help children who had fallen behind in reading at Belle Haven Community School in Menlo Park, California. Today Reading Partners serves students in California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and Washington DC. Reading Partners’ mission is to “help children become lifelong readers by empowering communities to provide individualized instruction with measurable results.”

Reading Partners’ vision includes a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion: “We believe in the power of educational equity to interrupt systemic racism, poverty, and social inequality. To support our students’ development of lifelong literacy skills, Reading Partners is committed to building a culturally competent and representative team to advance social justice through our service in schools and communities.” The organization sees recent events and protests calling for racial equality and justice as directly impacting the students and communities it serves.

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The Denver Foundation

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

Blue Engine

Launched in 2009, Blue Engine is an education nonprofit that optimizes the power of team teaching: having multiple teachers work together in a classroom in service of a shared outcome for students. They partner with teachers, schools, districts, and education organizations to ensure that educators can effectively collaborate and individualize instruction for every learner—regardless of race, income level, or learning style.

From 2015-2016, the team revisited Blue Engine’s core values and strategy, rearticulating their fundamental definitions of success and the values underlying those definitions—all with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as an anchor. Through a series of externally facilitated all-staff workshops and conversations, Blue Engine developed a powerful bedrock value statement around DEI in 2016:

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Low Income Investment Fund

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

The Denver Foundation

Founded nearly 100 years ago, the Denver Foundation (TDF) is the largest and oldest community foundation in the Rocky Mountain West. The foundation manages its own fund, as well as serving as a steward for ~1,000 funds established by donors.

Prior to the 2021 strategic plan, the Denver Foundation’s vision was of a Metro Denver where “all residents” have the opportunity for a high quality of life. While this vision implied a desire for equity, it did not explicitly call it out. To inform the organization’s next ten year strategic plan, TDF collected perspectives from 8,000 community members. This data, in combination with TDF’s ongoing internal conversations about race, led the board to focus its new ten-year strategic framework (2021-2031) on racial equity, with the vision of: “A Metro Denver that is racially equitable in its leadership, prosperity, and culture.” Relatedly, TDF now defines its purpose as: “[being] a proactive, collaborative, and resolute leader in reducing racial disparities.” “This was a significant jump for us,” Chief Impact Officer Dace West said, “to decide to really put equity, and explicitly racial equity, into the core of our vision statement.”

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The Greater Milwaukee Foundation

CASE STUDY | Mission & vision

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation

Founded in 1915, The Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF) is the largest community foundation in Wisconsin. Since its inception, GMF has awarded more than $862M in grants. Over the past twenty years, responding to high levels of racial inequity in the city, GMF has committed to racial equity as its “north star”.

In 2010, with the arrival of President and CEO Ellen Gilligan, the board approved new areas of strategic focus for the organization, including the prioritization of racial equity and inclusion. This marked a major shift in GMF’s history, moving away from “diversity” as the primary solution to racial disparity, towards a theory of change that recognizes systemic racial bias across the region. Extensive work over the subsequent five years culminated in the board approving a “generational commitment” to advancing racial equity and inclusion in 2016, and then doubling down on this commitment in the organization’s 2020-2025 strategic vision. The current GMF mission, vision, and strategy reflect both a recognition of systemic racism and a commitment to achieving equity. For example, the latest GMF strategic vision reads: “there’s a fault line running through every system we’ve built in our community: racism.” And the organization’s vision statement aspires to a Greater Milwaukee that is: “a vibrant, economically thriving region comprised of welcoming and inclusive communities that provide opportunity, prosperity and a high quality of life for all.”

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The San Francisco Foundation