RACIAL EQUITY HERE / ACT
UNDERSTANDING AND USING A RACIAL EQUITY TOOL
V4 June 17th, 2018
WELCOME
Welcome!
This deck contains instructions and templates to help your organization understand and regularly incorporate a racial equity tool into your daily work, particularly within major decisions — using a racial equity tool will help your organization shift toward a culture that proactively dismantles existing racial inequities, and actively drives better outcomes for communities of color while improving outcomes for everyone.
To adapt it for use in your organization in PowerPoint, you can download it as a PPT file, or you can download it as a PPT file, and then re-upload that file into your own Google Drive to edit the slides directly.
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Racial Equity Tool
[adapted from here]
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What is a racial equity tool?
A racial equity tool integrates explicit consideration of racial equity in decisions, including policies, practices, programs and budgets. It is both a product and a process. When racial equity is not explicitly brought into operations and decision-making, racial inequities are likely to be perpetuated. Use of a racial equity tool can help to develop strategies and actions that reduce racial inequities and improve success for all groups. A racial equity tool:
This racial equity tool template was developed by GARE: the Government Alliance on Race & Equity.
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A racial equity tool is a simple set of questions.
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Vision
Data
Partner
Plan
Implement
What is our vision for the future? How will we measure progress?
What are the data? What do these data tell us?
How can we continually partner with the communities most impacted?
Who benefits or will be burdened by this proposal? What are our strategies to advance racial equity or mitigate unintended consequences?
What is our plan for implementation, incorporating racial equity strategies?
Strengthen
How will we hold ourselves accountable, communicate results and keep improving?
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Racial equity tool template
Decision or Opportunity: [enter text here]
VISION: One sentence vision statement: [Describe your decision or opportunity in 1-2 sentences — what’s the end state we aim for?]
Who are the communities most likely to be impacted in any way? [enter text here]
Desired Results: What results — at the community level — will signal success? What results related to racial equity are we aiming for? Are there unintended results related to race or racial equity that we should consider? How will we track and measure progress? [enter text here]
DATA: What data are we using to inform our proposal? What are the racial demographics of the impacted communities? What data do we have about existing racial inequities that may influence outcomes? What data are missing? How can we get missing data? What do these data tell us? [enter text here]
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Racial equity tool template
PARTNER: How will the communities impacted by this decision guide and shape its development and implementation? How will we continue to meaningfully partner with community? [enter text here]
PLAN: Given what we have learned from data and community, who is most likely to benefit or be burdened by this decision? How is this decision likely to increase or decrease racial equity? What strategies will we use to proactively advance racial equity through this decision? What strategies will we use to monitor and mitigate expected harm and unanticipated harms? [enter text here]
IMPLEMENT: Given the possible racialized impacts of this decision, how will our implementation plan, including ongoing evaluation, actively work to mitigate and reduce racial disparities and advance racial equity? [enter text here]
STRENGTHEN: How will we collect, share and learn from the actual implementation of this decision? How will we share our findings transparently with impacted communities, strengthening partnerships with them as both stakeholders and co-creators? [enter text here]
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Examples from around the country
Through collaboration across sectors both locally and nationally, a number of excellent racial equity tools are in regular use. This resource gives you a template to start from, and we recommend that you use it for at least a year before investing too much time customizing it.
Check out these examples of racial equity tools in action:
Government Alliance on Race & Equity’s Racial Equity Toolkit
Race Forward’s Racial Justice Impact Assessment
Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Action Guide
Multnomah County’s Equity and Empowerment Lens | Seattle’s Racial Equity Toolkit
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When should you use a racial equity tool?
As much as possible, particularly on elements of your work that might appear “race-neutral.” Here are some of the most high-impact moments to make sure your racial equity tool is used:
Budgeting: Incorporate a racial equity tool as early as possible in the budgeting process.
Policy Review & Creation: A racial equity tool will be valuable during initial research, analysis, policy drafting, implementation and evaluation.
Hiring, HR and Employee Development: No matter your organization’s size, policies that impact people are critical in developing an inclusive workforce and a culture that embraces racial equity as an asset.
Community Engagement: Whether your end-user is a group of shareholders or local neighbors, a racial equity tool will help advance racial equity in your communities.
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HOW TO START
Here are ways you can begin incorporating a racial equity tool today.
Rewrite your agendas: Edit the standing agendas for all of your team’s internal meetings (i.e., weekly staff meeting, monthly leadership meeting, quarterly board meeting) so that the tool is part of your agenda and provided as a resource within the calendar invite.
Train your staff: Schedule an introductory training to encourage staff to start using the tool, then schedule a 30-minute meeting a month from the first meeting to check in and iterate.
Educate your board: Make sure your board understands the benefits of this tool by introducing it at your next board meeting.
Plan with your leadership: Brainstorm all the ways you can use the tool in upcoming decisions and develop a schedule for doing so.
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Go Deeper
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Resources for deepening your practice
Results-Based Accountability: This racial equity tool builds on a foundation of results-based accountability — your team can deepen skills in RBA using this guide from the Government Alliance on Race & Equity or others.
Racial Equity Plan: Using a racial equity plan is the next critical step in creating a culture of racial equity. This resource from GARE gives you a template for building on your racial equity tool to incorporate racial equity planning.
Racial Equity Tools:
Race Forward updates its tools regularly here
Racial Equity Tools is an excellent, robust library of additional racial equity tools
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LEARN, ACT, PARTNER
RACIAL EQUITY HERE
Our organization has committed — along with many others across the United States — to not just learn about racial equity, but to shift our own policies and practices so that we are actively driving better racial outcomes and partnering with other organizations in our field, in our communities and in our sector to advance a common racial equity agenda.
Find new partners at racialequityhere.org
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Good luck and stay in touch!
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mmartinez {at} raceforward {dot} org