Best Practices:

Best Practice #1:  The CEO of a nonprofit organization almost always establishes the level of commitment, the attitude, the pace, and the behaviors related to an organization’s overall inclusiveness practices.

Best Practice #2:  The most important quality that is found in leaders of organizations that are highly inclusive is that these leaders take a long-term, holistic approach to inclusiveness and integrate it into all of the work of the organization.

Best Practice #3:  Highly inclusive organizations recognize that people of color represent every socio-economic class and bring with them a variety of assets that will be valuable in achieving the organization’s mission.

Best Practice #4:  Inclusive nonprofits benefit from having a staff that is able to effectively community with constituent groups and the public.  Developing an inclusive staff requires a concerted effort to recruit and retain staff members of color.

Best Practice #5:  Inclusive nonprofit organizations develop their programs with an awareness of people from different cultural backgrounds.

Barriers:

Barrier #1:  The most significant barrier to inclusiveness that organizations face is the perception that the focus of their work is not relevant to communities of color.

Barrier #2:  Being “color blind” does not work.

Barrier #3:  Leaders of organizations that have been less successful in their efforts to become more inclusive often fail to recognize the human resources around them.  More specifically, organizations sometimes fail to recognize that they have potential board and staff members of color all around them, among current constituents and volunteers.

Barrier #4:  Nonprofit organizations with board an board leadership terms that are either very short or very long have the most difficult time implementing changes to inclusiveness practices.