Black August, observed each year in the month of August, honors the countless organizers, activists, and freedom fighters who sacrificed their freedom and lives in the struggle for Black liberation.
In addition to commemorating the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement, Black August is a time to call for the release of political prisoners in the U.S., to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons, and to emphasize the continued importance of the struggle for Black liberation. This annual observance was created in the 1970s by Black freedom fighters who wanted to honor the lives and deaths of Black political prisoners killed by the state, bring awareness to prison conditions, and to honor the radical tradition of Black resistance against anti-Black state violence and systemic oppression.
Barbershop Conversation Reflects on Black August
In this previously recorded webinar, African American male leaders from the sector dive into the historical value of Black August and discuss the lasting effects of systemic oppression on communities today. They also outline the challenges and opportunities for freedom and equity in communities of color that support voices that call for justice.
This is one of several barbershop-style webinars held by Social Current, which featured Black male executives from around the country, sharing their experiences and recommendations for advancing anti-racist leadership and championing equity-focused action in human services organizations.
Go to the on-demand webinar, Live at the Virtual Barbershop: Black August, The Legacy of Freedom Fighters, Past, Present & Future. Anyone can access the webinar with a free Social Current account. Log in to your existing account or create one if you are a new user.
Learn more about on-demand learning through the Social Current Knowledge and Insights Center.
Additional Equity Learning Opportunities
Advancing Health Equity Webinar Series
Join this webinar series to learn about ways community-based organizations can improve the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities most impacted by inequality and racism. Sessions in this series include:
- Social Determinants of Health Overview: Aug. 20
- ACEs Interface and Building Resilience: Aug. 27
- Health Access for Special Populations: Sept. 10
Translating EDI Practice Into Action Virtual Learning Series
This virtual learning series is designed for staff who are leading their organizations’ EDI efforts. Participants will be able to better address complex workplace dynamics and craft meaningful strategies for growth. Sessions in this series include:
- Cultural Humility: Sept. 9 from Noon-2 p.m. ET
- Implicit Bias: Sept. 24 from Noon-2 p.m. ET
- Psychological Safety and Equity: Oct. 1 from Noon-2 p.m. ET
Advancing Equity Workshop: Fundamentals to Support Your Journey
Includes Three Parts: Nov. 6, 13, 20
During this three-part virtual workshop, participants will learn and engage in a safe environment, where they can ask questions and share reflections with their peers. Participants will develop a deeper personal EDI journey, learn how to build an inclusive work culture, and become more aware of the systems that impact us all.
Social Current’s Knowledge and Insights Center is now offering access to the Next Big Idea Club. This virtual book club, curated by bestselling authors Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink, delivers the most important nonfiction books of the year. Through our online forum, you can dive deep into impactful ideas with 45-minute audio and video lessons. These lessons distill the essence of groundbreaking books, offering you a comprehensive understanding in a fraction of the time.
Social Current’s access includes highlights from the Next Big Idea Club’s collection of books, with a particular emphasis on:
- Workplace relationships
- Workforce resilience
- Improved communication and interpersonal connection
- Authentic approaches to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
In this forum, featuring lessons from the books below, you’ll learn strategies and techniques that improve relationships with coworkers, clients, community members, and partners, in addition to your personal relationships away from work.
- High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped in Conflict and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley
- Uncensored: My Life and Uncomfortable Conversations at the Intersection of Black and White America by Zachary Wood
- You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Muphy
- No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
Access to the Next Big Idea Club is an exclusive benefit for Social Current Impact Partners.
Learn more about the benefits of becoming an Impact Partner online and by joining an upcoming informational webinar.
How to Access
Go to Next Big Idea Club: Better Relationships In and Out of the Workplace.
Social Current Impact Partners can access these lessons for free by logging into the hub. Log in to your existing account or create one if you are a new user. Once logged in, check out the resources list and click on the individual records to view.
Learn more about the Social Current Knowledge and Insights Center.
2024 will mark the fourth year Juneteenth is recognized as a federal holiday, and an increasing amount of employers are including it on their holiday calendars. In 2021, just 9% of employers had made Juneteenth a paid company holiday. That jumped to 33% in 2022 and rose again to 39% in 2023, according to a report by Mercer.
In addition to honoring Juneteenth as a paid holiday, organizations can recognize it with dedicated time for education and connection. Some resources with ideas and inspiration include:
- National Museum of African American History and Culture 2024 theme: Freedom, Movement, and Migration
- How to Celebrate Juneteenth This Year, By Chelsea Candelario, PureWow
- Remembrance, Reflection, And Celebration: How To Celebrate Juneteenth At Work In 2024, Vantage Circle
- 25+ Juneteenth Ideas for Work, by Akila McConnell, Unexpected Virtual Tours
- 16 Juneteenth Celebration Ideas for Work, teambuilding
- Celebrating Juneteenth and Continuing to Work in Solidarity for Racial Justice, Equality, and Equity, America’s Charities
Although recognizing Juneteenth is one step toward promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), organizations should look to create an EDI-enriched organizational culture in meaningful and strategic ways as well.
“It is good to see that more organizations are now closing their offices for Juneteenth, but it’s not enough. To truly move the needle, leaders should be assessing their organizations and looking for how they can support their employees and communities in more substantive ways that meaningfully address inequities,” said Undraye Howard, vice president of equity, diversity, inclusion, and engagement at Social Current.
Comprehensively addressing EDI is a powerful strategy for increasing belonging and is inextricably linked to foundational pillars of workforce resilience, including psychological safety, creating space for difficult conversations, and increasing brain science awareness.
However, if an organization doesn’t have a plan or a multilevel commitment from staff, efforts can fall short and negatively impact staff engagement and morale. In a recent report released by WebMD Health Services on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging: Uncovering What Employees are Offered, Want and Need, 62% of workers surveyed say Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEI&B) programs aren’t effective, and nearly half (46%) say the programs had failed them personally.
To help equity efforts gain momentum and have lasting impact, Social Current recommends that organizations address it at the individual, organization, and systems levels. In addition, it is critical to engage all staff as important in this work, but also create measurable goals and clear accountability.
Effective Strategies for Advancing Equity and Workforce Resilience
Given that most organizations are feeling the strain of shrinking resources, increasing costs and demands for services, and significant workforce challenges, concurrently addressing equity and workforce resilience is strategic and increases the potential for impact. Organizations must partner with staff and prioritize advancing equity as core to how they look to advance workforce resilience.
“Nurturing a positive and supportive culture that aligns with our values does not happen overnight. Learning and building capacity around the concepts and interconnected strategies for EDI and workforce resilience, developing individualized plans, and putting plans into action and course correcting along the way is the surest way to make progress toward their goals,” said Karen Johnson, director of the Social Current Change in Mind Institute. “This work requires us to be innovative, curious, and courageous, but it is doable, and our workforce is worth the investment.”
Free Resources from Social Current
How organizations can help their staff to support their coworkers of color:
- Impact Partnership Spotlight: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. (free webinar June 24 at 3 p.m. ET)
- Uncovering the Traps of Implicit Bias. (on-demand webinar)
- Psychological Safety and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: How Embracing Discomfort Leads to Growth. (on-demand webinar)
- Black Women in Leadership Presents: It’s All Good…But It’ Not. (on-demand webinar)
- Are We Ready to Confront the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap? (on-demand course)
- Special Juneteenth Reading List. This reading list was curated by librarians in Social Current’s Knowledge and Insights Center.
Impact Partner Exclusive
- Advancing Equity Resource Collection. (Impact Partners should log in to the Hub to access the Knowledge and Insights Center.)
In-Depth Training and Networking Opportunities
- SPARK 2024 In-Person Event. This conference, Oct. 2-22 in Denver, will have a dedicated track for EDI, as well as a pre-conference session Oct. 20 that delves into how to navigate our polarized environment and sustain practices over time.
- Advancing Equity Workshop: Fundamentals to Support Your Journey. This three-part virtual workshop, July 9, 16, and 25 and Nov. 6, 13, 20, will provide a safe environment for participants to explore their relationships with EDI, gain strategies for promoting an inclusive workplace culture, and learn about the systems that impact us all.
- Save the Date: EDI Essentials for Supervisors. Using EDI principles as the foundation, this virtual learning series will help supervisors support and engage their teams. Sessions are July 31, Aug. 14, Sept. 18, and Dec. 4.
- Save the Date: Translating EDI Practice Into Action. This virtual learning series is designed for staff who are leading their organizations’ EDI efforts and want to grow their understanding and application of key EDI concepts. Sessions are Sept. 9, Sept. 24, and Oct. 1.
Advancing equity takes sustained commitment from leaders and organizations and at the same time, needs to begin somewhere. This Juneteenth, affirm your commitment to your workforce and advancing EDI.
Many social sector organizations are facing staffing challenges and tight budget constraints. For leaders striving to hold on to their organizational commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), keeping the work going can feel like navigating hurdle after hurdle.
Amid the ebbs and flows in support for EDI in the workplace, staff capacity is a constant factor. In our work at Social Current, we have seen that the organizations that are able to successfully advance equity over the long term pay attention to the time and resources needed to achieve their goals. They also allow provide the flexibility and support their staff need to thrive.
Some strategies for managing through times of reduced capacity include:
Adapt Your EDI Goals and Action Plan
Review your goals for the year and for the longer term. Which are already embedded into existing work and job responsibilities? Make sure to capture their progress. Identify the strategies and tactics that will require a significant lift from your committee or new resources and revise your plan to reflect the reality of your staff capacity and existing commitments. It’s better to prioritize and reduce the number of goals for the year than to risk burnout by asking people to take on more than is feasible.
Keep Goals Aligned and Focused
It’s often easier to give up the difficult work and keep the bare minimum going during times of low capacity. When identifying core goals to focus on for the year, choose what’s most important, the ones that address root causes of your biggest challenges. This may look like:
- Pausing your EDI newsletter and quarterly brown bag discussions in favor of implementing your staff professional development plan.
- Eliminating subcommittees or discussion groups to engage staff members in conducting your program equity audit.
- Prioritizing learning for staff members on topics/issues they’ve identified as critical, holding off on implementing other action items until core training is complete.
Be sure to consider the data on your organization’s current needs and readiness when making choices. Identify the leverage potential of each strategy and create a balance that allows you to continue making progress toward embedding EDI over the long term.
Strengthen Your Committee Structure
It’s important not to relegate implementation of the organization’s EDI goals to one or two people, even during lean times. Committees are a proven strategy for maintaining momentum over the long term. It’s important to build a network of staff EDI champions and increase the diversity of voices when making decisions. Committees also serve as an important anchor for your champions, as well as the skeptical, to see the continued commitment to your stated EDI goals and values.
Communicate Progress and Challenges
Transparency is critical for shifting the organization’s culture to embed EDI values and practices. Report to staff on the changes made to the EDI plan, the goals that will be prioritized, and the reason for the shifts. Follow up with regular reports on the data so that staff can see the progress made.
Additional Resources and Support
- Guide to Creating an Effective Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee: If your committee needs support or could benefit from a review of structure, download Social Current’s free guide on effective EDI committees. It includes recommendations for a committee’s purpose and authority, size and makeup, and troubleshooting common committee challenges.
- Virtual Training: Advancing Equity Workshop: Fundamentals to Support Your Journey, offered in July and November, is a three-part training to help you advance your personal EDI journey, build an inclusive workplace culture, and become more aware of the systems that impact us all.
- Customized Consultation: Social Current’s experienced staff can help you jumpstart your efforts or troubleshoot challenges, which could save you time and money in the long run. Our services can be tailored to your organization’s specific needs.
Throughout Social Current’s decades of partnering with social sector leaders to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), we have seen support for this work ebb and flow. However, we believe we are at a critical moment for this work. Last year’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action was a significant blow to EDI efforts, with thousands of EDI executives leaving or losing their jobs. Today, we continue to face ever-increasing polarization and preemptive efforts to roll back EDI policies.
Phyllis Richards and Jerica Broeckling, who provide Social Current’s EDI training and facilitation services, recently published an article on this topic in Nonprofit Business Advisor. In it, they outline why, despite ongoing challenges, we cannot afford to turn our backs on EDI. Additionally, they outline three truths they have seen emerge from Social Current’s work with organizations around the country:
- We are still just getting started
- We won’t make large-scale progress until we bring more people, more groups, and more systems into the work
- We have to be united in our beliefs and a common vision; this journey requires all voices
“The end goal of this growth is shifting of mindsets, which we believe is the deepest level of change that needs to be achieved for this work to be successful. People who think differently about the work will have different expectations, different goals, and ultimately different practices,” they say in the article.
At Social Current, we believe advancing equity is a journey, not a sprint. Organizations should look to embed EDI in many areas – from staff engagement to service delivery – and maintain steady progress toward durable change.
Read the article, “Why We Can’t Afford to Turn Our Backs on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” online. The full text is available through August.
Training and Support for Your Journey
Social Current is offering a variety of trainings for supervisors and staff leading EDI initiatives. Learn more and register online.
For tailored assistance in EDI, we offer customizable consulting services.
Advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is an ongoing journey that requires continuous learning and dialogue among all staff. Through our work, we know that organizations are the most effective in advancing EDI when they build an organizational culture that deeply embeds these precepts at multiple levels. Our upcoming Advancing Equity Workshop is designed for staff looking for foundational knowledge in EDI.
Social Current Impact Partners and organizations that have achieved COA Accreditation receive a discounted rate.
Advancing Equity Workshop: Fundamentals to Support Your Journey
During this three-part virtual workshop, participants will learn and engage in a safe environment, where they can ask questions and share reflections with their peers. Using Social Current’s three-prong approach to EDI (Person, Organization and Systems), the presenters will encourage participants to develop a deeper personal EDI journey, to build an inclusive work culture, and to become more aware of the systems that impact us all.
Participants will explore their relationships with EDI in a safe environment and increase understanding of how to build an equitable and inclusive workplace culture and foster psychological safety. In addition, they will explore the phases of organizational growth in EDI and learn about the essential components of a successful EDI plan. Participants will gain the foundation they need to create their own EDI plan.
Learn more and register for this three-part workshop, Nov. 6, 13, and 20.
Customized Consulting
Social Current also offers support and training through our EDI consulting. Our services build on decades of work with nonprofit organizations and knowledge about what makes EDI efforts successful. Learn more and contact us to get started.
We have long been aware of the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on our long-term health and well-being. Because toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and how the body responds to stress, their occurrence in childhood has a direct correlation to increases in substance abuse, mental illnesses, and poor health outcomes.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a new study that puts a staggering dollar figure on that impact. Researchers found that ACEs cost our nation $14.1 trillion annually because of related adult health conditions, including direct medical spending and lost productivity.
However, the study is limited, in that it doesn’t identify the disparities in the number of ACEs impacting children and families of color, and the exponentially higher costs for this segment of our population. In fact, a recent Child Trends report indicates that 61% of Black children in the U.S. have experienced at least one ACE, as compared with 40% of white children and 23% of Asian children.
Researchers have long identified ACEs based on the Felitti scale, which identifies 10 items under two categories:
- Maltreatment: Physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and physical and emotional neglect
- Parental Problems: Psychopathology, substance misuse, and three forms of family instability
What’s missing is the impact of generational and historical trauma, especially racism.
Impact of Generational Trauma and Systemic Racism
Racism has a direct and measurable impact on children’s health. More families of color live in poverty than white families, which can lead to food insecurity, lack of safe housing, and reduced access to health care and education. All of these increase chronic stress in children and can have long-term health consequences, with African Americans at a higher risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma, influenza, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. This disproportionality also is evident in incarceration rates, child welfare system involvement, and educational outcomes for African American youth, and disparities are often linked to systemic biases.
Research backs this up. A study from Princeton University sociologist Devah Pager showed that young Black men with similar education and no criminal record were much less likely to be offered a job than similar white men. It went on to show that white men with criminal records had an equal or better chance of being hired than Black men with no record. We see the same biases in housing discrimination, child separation rates in child welfare, and more.
There has been some progress in expanding the ACEs scale to reflect the toxic stress that bias and racism impart on children. For example, the team at RYSE Youth Center in Oakland expanded the original ACEs pyramid from the CDC, adding layers of collective and multigenerational thinking, layers of historical, cultural, and social context, to highlight the deeper roots of trauma and explore why these traumatic experiences occur in the first place. The CDC has since adopted the more complete picture offered by this pyramid.
For those of us who work in health and human services, it is critical that we expand our understanding of trauma and adversity beyond the 10 ACEs questions, and work to integrate both trauma-informed and antiracist efforts across the systems we support.
Embracing a Trauma-Informed Approach
One example can be found in Zero to Three’s Safe Babies Court Team™ (SBCT) approach, which focuses on minimizing trauma and its impact on early development by improving how the courts, child welfare agencies, and related child-serving organizations come together to partner with families to support their young children. This approach recognizes that some families experience great stress while raising their children due to environmental conditions—community violence, systemic racism, trauma, or health issues—that make it difficult to provide safety and stability. The Safe Babies Court Team approach does not promote a “one-size-fits-all” solution to the challenges faced by families within the child welfare system or by the system itself. By addressing the needs of each family, through housing, work opportunities, job training, transportation, substance use counseling, and more, Safe Babies Courts are showing that their children are reaching permanency three times faster than infants and toddlers in the general foster care population. Almost two-thirds of babies and toddlers are reunified or find permanent homes with members of their families.
This approach calls for practitioners to ensure all equity efforts include knowledge and practices that embed brain science concepts, including understanding the areas of our nervous system that are activated when we discuss, experience, or perpetrate racism, and how that activation creates barriers for connection.
A core concept of the trauma-informed approach is, “healing happens in relationships.” The development of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships can help build greater resilience in individuals. In its July 2021 policy statement, the Academy of Pediatrics emphasized the need to shift from toxic stress to building relational health. As Dr. Andrew Garner with the American Academy of Pediatrics notes: “The concept of drawing on positive relationships as a shield against the toxic stress caused by adverse experiences has never been more relevant. Over the past few years, we’ve experienced a socially isolating pandemic and reckoned with centuries of structural racism. We must take steps to help kids form close, healthy, and nurturing bonds, whether it is within family, school, or community.”
Policymakers have a role to play as well, by promoting concrete, economic supports and family strengthening policies, such as expanded family medical leave, child tax credits, access to safe and affordable housing, access to early childhood education and mental health services, and more. Research from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago has demonstrated that connecting families to a well-resourced, community-driven prevention system can meaningfully address the root causes of adverse experiences, including racism, child abuse and neglect and trauma.
Despite the terrible cost of ACEs, both in economic dollars and lifelong negative impacts, the latest research has demonstrated the potential for safe, stable, and nurturing relationships to act as a protective buffer against the harm of toxic stress on children. When we expand our view of ACEs to include the impact of generational racism, and lift up community efforts focused on building relationships and an understanding that our diversity as a nation is our strength, we have a better roadmap to addressing disparities and incorporating trauma-informed approaches that can help provide all children with a foundation for building resilience that leads to safer, healthier outcomes throughout their life.
It is Brain Awareness Week, a global campaign to share the impact of brain science on our everyday lives, and an opportunity to explore how brain science concepts impact our trauma-informed and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)-focused work. We know we cannot be trauma-informed without being antiracist. But our efforts at this intersection remain siloed. Within human services organizations, this work is often defined and carried out by separate trauma-informed and antiracist committees and can be hampered by limited understanding of how to integrate the two at the individual and organizational levels.
At the intersection of EDI and brain science we wrestle with trauma-informed concepts, such as power differentials, psychological safety, difficult conversations, implicit bias, vulnerability, and healing. With a stronger understanding of brain science, we strengthen our capacities for mindfulness and cultural humility, develop our own racial identity, boost our self-regulation skills and compassion for self and others, and advance a healing journey that includes our whole body.
Translating Knowledge into Action
One opportunity for deep impact is rooting all EDI work in a foundation of basic brain science concepts. The brain impacts our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors during every second of our day. Our brains are designed to keep us safe, constantly monitoring our surroundings and putting up “fight or flight” barriers when we experience things that are new or different. Yet, we are also social beings, craving connection and belonging. The brain’s primary function of keeping us safe can sometimes conflict with our human need to connect. This conflict impacts our EDI efforts, our ability to bridge differences, and our efforts to heal from trauma, especially the trauma of white supremacy. With a deeper understanding of basic brain science concepts, we become more aware of opportunities and strategies to quiet our brain’s safety function so we can connect, integrate our trauma-informed and equity initiatives, and advance our personal and organizational EDI efforts.
Resmaa Menakem, therapist, trauma specialist, and author of My Grandmother’s Hands and The Quaking of America, teaches that healing from centuries of racial trauma for all bodies requires an embodied approach, one that recognizes the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. Today, white supremacy is our operating system—it’s the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the foods we eat. It’s embedded in our institutions and social contracts. Most of all, though, white supremacy lives in our bodies, which is why Menakem uses the term, “white-body supremacy.”
Menakem teaches that white body supremacy, “and all the claims, accusations, excuses, and dodges that surround it — are a trauma response … and we need to heal from it by starting with our bodies.” Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism notes, “White Supremacy is not rational, and we don’t heal it with our intellect alone.”
So, what does this mean for our EDI and trauma-informed efforts? Here are two strategies that incorporate these concepts and get us thinking about making changes in our daily practices.
Regulate, Regulate, Regulate
Regulation is the basic strategy for calming the defensive and reactive parts of our brain so that we can access the more receptive, open, learning parts. Focused breathing, taking a short walk, listening to music, using a standing desk are all ways to keep our mind clear and focused. There are dozens of regulation strategies to use in the work setting, both for large groups and individuals.
Dr. Bruce Perry’s sequence of engagement – regulate, relate, reason – is a simple practice for effective communication that starts with regulation. The steps work in this order:
- Regulate: First, ensure we are calm and centered before we start talking. You and your colleagues can use regulation strategies that work for you.
- Relate: Next, connect human to human. Ask a colleague, “What are you looking forward to?” “What are you worried about?” “What are you thinking about today?”
- Reason: Finally, move to the content of the conversation – to do lists, a pending project, or complex equity dynamics in a work relationship.
When we do this at every meeting, supervision session, and human interaction, especially the hard ones we avoid, we have greater success in our communications. We move closer to achieving the EDI and trauma-informed outcomes we strive for—candid conversations, individual and organizational accountability, and inclusive environments.
Somatic and Embodied Practices
Somatic means related to the body. Embodied signifies feeling at home and safe in our body, an increased ability to be in our body in the present moment and to feel all its sensations. Somatic embodied practices build our awareness of our brain’s safety functions and help us to quiet those strong impulses, which strengthens our ability to connect and belong.
It turns out that somatic, embodied practices are critically important in our EDI work. Resmaa Menakem’s Somatic Abolitionism teaches us that, “Race has its unique charge, texture, weight, and speed. The ability to hold and work with these energies isn’t inborn. It needs to be acquired through effort and practice.” Somatic abolitionism is living, embodied antiracist practice and cultural building—a way of being in the world.
Menakem suggests healing from white body supremacy starts with the practice of five anchors:
- Settle the body
- Notice the sensations without reacting
- Accept the discomfort and sit with it
- Remain present and experience the uncertainty
- Safely discharge any energy that remains
Menakem teaches that we can strengthen our muscles for practicing these five anchors through repetition of cultural somatic practices including grounding, orientation, movement, touch and pause.
Using somatic and embodied practices are not an overnight fix. Healing from white supremacy, for all bodies, is a lifelong journey. But understanding that healing starts by focusing on our bodies puts us on a new path to exploring our EDI work and integrating it with our trauma-informed efforts.
The needs of human services staff and complexities of our work require us to embrace new ways of being at work. Embedding brain science concepts into our daily interactions could have many benefits. The good news is there are countless ways, as individuals and organizations, to prioritize brain-friendly and healing practices. When we do this, we will help settle our bodies and brains, bridge differences, increase connection, improve equity and accountability, and truly integrate our trauma-informed and equity-focused efforts to reach the outcomes we are so hungry to achieve. The biggest challenge may be taking the first step to get started.
Next Steps in Applying Brain Science to Your EDI Efforts
To learn more about the brain and how it advances our equity efforts, join our upcoming learning series – Hardwired for Fear and Connection: The Intersection of Brain Science and Equity – which starts March 19. In this three-part series we will focus on the intersection of brain science and EDI and its application for our daily work. We will build shared understanding of foundational brain friendly and EDI concepts and consider how our daily EDI efforts are interrupted by our key brain functions often outside of our consciousness. Additionally, we will share concrete strategies for increasing self-awareness, quieting our lower brains, having difficult conversations, understanding power differentials, and increasing felt safety in our work setting, and advancing somatic-embodied approaches.
Other ways that Social Current can help with our EDI and trauma-informed journeys:
- Consultation: Learning collaboratives, one-on-one consultation, and learning series offer specially designed experiences to create brain-science informed partnerships with staff that improve engagement, retention, and communication; focus on sustainable culture change; and reframe challenges as opportunities to grow and become stronger.
- Knowledge & Insights: The Knowledge and Insights Center disseminates a robust collection of research and resources, including curation on brain science research and applications. Services are available through the Social Current Impact Partnerships as well as separate subscriptions to the Resources Portal and custom research projects.
- Learning: Through the Learning Exchange, national experts explain brain science research and give practical recommendations for implementing and sustaining practices that support employees, improve performance, and increase the success of organizational outcomes. Examples include Core Strategies for Workforce Well-Being and Resilience.
Organizations will be most effective in advancing their equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) journey when they build an organizational culture that deeply embeds these precepts at multiple levels. That’s why Social Current focuses on solutions for organizational change and excellence and uses a person–organization–system approach to advancing equity, opportunity, and impact.
Black History Month offers an opportunity to share some of our staff’s recent favorite resources for organizational change and leadership that can improve, not inhibit, the potential of BIPOC staff at community-based organizations. See the resource list below with information and data; guidance, tools, and templates; and topic collections with more resources exclusively for Impact Partners in the Social Current network.
Check out additional Social Current opportunities that help community-based organizations commit to authentic and sustainable EDI work that helps all people to thrive, too:
- Staff Training and Workshops: Hardwired for Fear and Connection: The Intersection of Brain Science and Equity (three-part series starts March 19)
- Organizational Change:
- Qualified programs and competencies: COA AccreditationAssessment and certification: Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (informational session Feb. 20; applications due March 29)
- Best Practices: Commitments of High-Impact Nonprofit Organizations
- Consulting and Coaching: EDI and Workforce Resilience
- Impact Partnerships: Tools, resources, learning, and networking opportunities
- Policy Action Center: Public policy agenda and toolkits
Resources
Information and Data
Where Employees Think Companies’ EDI Efforts Are Failing (Harvard Business Review) Two recent surveys from Gallup reveal stark differences in how well employees and HR leaders say their organizations are doing when it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
Race to Lead Revisited: Obstacles and Opportunities in Addressing the Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap (Building Movement Project) New insights to the groundbreaking survey and report that presented findings from a 2019 survey of more than 5,000 nonprofit staff on their experiences of race and leadership.
The Psychological Safety of Black Employees (WorkingWell Daily) How organizations can create safer workplaces for Black employees.
The Currency of Human Resources Is Trust (Stanford Social Innovation Review) HR management, if not done through an explicit lens of racial and gender justice, perpetuates structural biases. That said, HR professionals are in an optimal position, through formal and informal roles and practices, to begin to dismantle systemic racial and gender barriers.
Guidance, Tools, and Templates
Harvard Implicit Association Test (Project Implicit) This test looks at the connections between concepts to determine a person’s unconscious biases. The results are often surprising, but our hidden biases are powerful.
Race Equity Cycle Pulse Check (Equity in the Center) Learn how an organization rates on transforming organizational culture, practice, and process to narrow (and eventually eliminate) race-based disparities in measurable outcomes (composition, compensation, promotion, retention, staff engagement, staff performance, etc.).
Black History Month at Work – Important or Tokenistic? (EW Group) How the best organizations engage with Black History Month, the challenges from BHM, and suggested activities during BHM.
Five Questions for Every Organization During Black History Month (Forbes Equity Quotient) Questions that every organization should ask itself to be more inclusive of the Black community in their year-round operations.
Empowering Black Women In The Workplace (Forbes) Part of uplifting Black women is acknowledging harmful tropes and actively working to see them as individuals, not walking stereotypes.
Leadership Development Programs Need an Upgrade: Five Ways to Advance Racial Equity (The Center for Effective Philanthropy) Promoting, retaining, and supporting BIPOC leadership within nonprofits is critical for driving systemic change. Funders can consider how they might tailor and incorporate these into their own approaches to supporting leadership.
Impact Partner Exclusive
Organizations that are Social Current Impact Partners have access to these library resource collections in the Knowledge and Insights Center. To access these collections, log in to the Hub or create an account. Learn more about Impact Partnerships online.
Commitment to Advancing Equity Collection: This collection helps community-based organizations tackle issues that cause and sustain inequity and authentically and collaboratively reduce the social, economic, political, and cultural exclusion of underrepresented and marginalized communities.
Health and Mental Well-Being: This collection focuses on the health and mental well-being of children, youth, and adults—including the optimization of formal and informal supports, asset-building, and resilience at the individual and community levels—and what systemic change is necessary to ensure all people can achieve their full potential.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 15, 2024, is an annual observance to honor the life and legacy of the prominent civil rights leader. There are a variety of ways to recognize the holiday, including personal reflection, education, service projects, and advocacy.
“At Social Current, we say that equity is a journey, which always reminds me of the Martin Luther King Jr. quote, ‘If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward,’” says Romero Davis, director of practice excellence at Social Current. “It’s a reminder of the principles of equity, justice, and the ongoing pursuit of a better, more inclusive society that Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for throughout his life.”
The King Center has given this year the theme, It Starts with Me: Shifting the Cultural Climate through the Study and Practice of Kingiang Nonviolence. According to the center, nonviolence is a love-centered way of thinking, speaking, acting, and engaging that leads to personal, cultural, and societal transformation. For nonviolent social change, it recommends six steps: Information Gathering, Education, Personal Commitment, Negotiation, Direct Action, and Reconciliation. It describes Reconciliation as, “Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve the injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation is one step close to the ‘Beloved Community.’”
Social Current is offering a new healing-centered virtual learning series, starting March 19, that will delve into the intersection of brain science and equity. By understanding the brain science related to bias and racism, we can be better prepared to have increased self-awareness, engage productively in difficult conversations, and create environments that support belonging for all people.
“Our framework for advancing equity prioritizes healing at three levels—individual, organization, and system. Racism harms all of us and requires us to work from the inside-out,” says Kelly Martin, director of practice excellence at Social Current. By focusing first on individual healing and growth, we are supporting others in their ability to engage in productive, sustainable antiracism efforts within their organizations, as well as within their communities and systems.”
Social Current also will be recognizing the National Day of Racial Healing by encouraging our network organizations to participate, and by focusing our monthly antiracist employee resource group discussion on the topic of racial healing. The National Day of Racial Healing, created by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and celebrated the Tuesday following Martin Luther King Jr. Day, provides an opportunity for individuals, communities, and organizations to join together in acknowledging the values we share as people, build trust in one other, develop authentic relationships and inspire collective action to heal from the effects of racism.
At Social Current, we have seen the power of using equity, diversity, and inclusion to engage an organization’s full strength and range of views, experiences, and abilities. Undraye Howard, vice president at Social Current, recently discussed this in an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, What Strong Organizations Know about DEI.
We believe in embedding equity in organizations to encourage healthy dialogue, sense of belonging, and adaptive leadership skills. “Organizations who grasp (the benefits of advancing equity) will ultimately show impact in their bottom line, organizational goals, and mission,” says Undraye in the article. “The equity journey is for the long haul but taking that first step should be the priority for all organizations who seek to uphold the values upon which our nation was founded.”
Learn more about Social Current’s work to support organizations through consulting and learning.