Five Steps to Increasing Diversity in Nonprofits

By Steve Scheier, CEO and Founder of Scheier+Group and author of Do More Good. Better. Using the Power of Decision Clarity™ to Mobilize the Power of Your Nonprofit Team.

From yourmarkontheworld.com

In the aggregate, nonprofit organizations are staffed by people from diverse backgrounds. But if we take a closer look at who runs and makes the key decisions in these nonprofits we see patterns that are reflective of the larger society: the leaders of many nonprofits are white and the people implementing the decisions of these leaders are diverse.

This realization caused the respected NPQ to assert in its December, 2014 edition that “The Nonprofit Sector Has a Ferguson Problem.”

Why did the NPQ come to this conclusion? Because a number of studies have shown that whites lead 9.5 out of 10 philanthropic organizations. Only 7 percent of nonprofit chief executives and 18 percent of nonprofit employees are people of color.

So even though most nonprofit advocacy is targeted at diverse communities the people leading these efforts are usually white. They are likely very committed and well intentioned and committed to advancing the social needs they’ve vowed to take on but the preponderance of white leaders means that there is comparatively little opportunity for more diverse leaders to emerge.

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