Nonprofit Lowdown #91-Talking about race with your board with Martha Haakmat
Oh, our boards. In this time of BLM and the broader conversations around racial equity, it can be hard to know where to begin with your board. Boards are often more conservative, wealthier and less diverse than our staff and clients so how do we get them on their DEI path? In this really important conversation with DEI consultant Martha Haakmat, we talk about
1) How to get boards to understand the continuum of DEI development and what that looks like on a policy and practice level.
2) Creating a DEI culture on the board through norms and recruitment.
3) Creating a sense of shared responsibility for DEI across board and staff.
To get in touch with Martha, check out: https://www.haakmatconsulting.com/
To get in touch with Morty Ballen for some free DEI support: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morty-ballen
List of resources that Martha recommends:
- Benaji and Greenwald’s book called Blindspot (about implicit bias)
- Dolly Chugh’s book called The Person You Mean To Be
- Jennifer Eberhardt’s book called Biased
- Ibram Kendi’s How To Be An Anti-Racist
- Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility
- Eloquent Rage - Brittney Cooper
- Anything by Ta-nehisi Coates
- Podcasts - Code Switch, Seeing White, Race Forward
- Anti-racism Resources for White People: a compilation of resources for white people and parents to deepen our work in anti-racism
The rubric that she uses in work with leadership teams and Boards:
https://www.wpi.edu/sites/default/files/Project_Inclusion_NERCHE_Rubric-Self-Assessment-2016.pdf