Building organizations with H.E.A.R.T.: A path forward for the nonprofit sector

I watch the reckoning happening in our sector with baited breath. I am hopeful about what’s possible, a little jaded about whether leaders will really change or changes will really stick, and nervous for the fearful and toxic cultures I see emerging in organizations who respond to these swift calls for justice with knee-jerk and performative actions, but don’t actually become more healthy in the process.

After dialoguing with thought-leaders in the racial justice space and doing my own reflection as a practitioner in this work, I have the kernel of an idea for how we as CEOs and Executive Directors, or those coaching senior leaders through these high-stakes moments of transformation, might think bigger about what’s possible for organizations in the throes of racial justice transformation. An idea for how we stop harm, support restorative justice and organizational healing, and do so with an eye toward becoming stronger at the point of breakage - the way a bone might become stronger at the point where a child has broken it if it heals correctly. 

I believe that nonprofits will only be whole, when they have H.E.A.R.T. - when they prioritize being healthy, equitable, anti-racist, real, and trust-centered. All five of these elements must be present if we want organizations and their teams to recover, and be stronger and more successful after a reckoning while also becoming truly and sustainably just.

• Healthy: Healthy nonprofit organizations are places that attract, engage, grow, support, include and keep amazing people because they’ve built the talent, culture, leadership, financial, resource generation and programmatic systems that allow their team members to thrive at work.
• Equitable: Equitable nonprofits have done the work (and built systems to continue to do the work) to disrupt bias in their practices and systems that would lead Black, Indigenous and People of Color, LGBTQ staff, or others with historically marginalized identities to have a lower chance of success than team members with more privileged identities in their environment. This means auditing and continually monitoring everything from recruitment and hiring systems, pay systems, promotion and evaluation systems, and management practices - as well as other informal reward mechanisms in the org - to ensure you’re continually disrupting white supremacy and other systems of injustice that attempt to derail your organization’s intentions around racial and social justice and equity.
• Antiracist: What our field is learning is there is no middle ground: that in a U.S. context, organizations must be intentional about how they ensure racial justice for their employees with historically marginalized identities - and especially for their Black employees. What this means in practice is ensuring the culture and environment you are building, the team you are hiring, the vendors you are working with, and the funders you are courting align to your organization’s desire to disrupt white supremacy and create Black affirming spaces that honor and create space for Black employees (as well as Indigenous employees and employees of color) in particular to thrive.
• Real: In order for organizations to be places where individual continuous learning and improvement is possible, especially around deeply sensitive issues like implicit bias, building trust across lines of racial difference, and learning to have direct and trust-building feedback conversations people must have psychological safety at all levels of the organizational chart. This means that both leaders and team members feel that they can make mistakes, without being thrown out like yesterday’s trash if they do. At the same time, there has to be room for “calling in” conversations when those mistakes happen - and real change in response to that feedback. When those conditions are absent, there isn’t sufficient psychological safety to show up as we are - a prerequisite for belonging, especially if your race, gender, age or other identity factors are underrepresented in your organization.
• Trust-centered: The truth is that the business sector (and sadly, the nonprofit sector) in the U.S. often focuses so much on productivity and output that we end up minimizing the fact that we employ humans - and humans are not machines. Humans require trust to be in community - and to produce their best work. This is especially true in our current context, where people are often working from their bedrooms or kitchen tables, in the middle of a global pandemic, and with real fear about the future of their job and of our nation. In this context, organizational leaders must develop capabilities - in themselves and in others - to build, protect and grow trust with and among our team members by making sure their words and actions are consistently communicating, 1) I value you and your contributions to our team, 2) I've got your back and will support your success 3) I will do what I say and act in integrity, and 4) you can trust me to make our organization better and more successful.

I don’t have all the answers here, but what I know for sure is that organizations seeking to recover from breaches of trust and patterns of inequity need to think about more than just firing or censuring their CEO or senior leaders, making public statements, or quick extreme reactions and promises that they can’t sustain. Instead, while these things may be needed, organizational leaders need to think about how they build healthy organizations that prioritize equity and antiracism and create the conditions for people to be real with each other and build trust across lines of race, gender, age, sexual orientation and other meaningful lines of difference.