Introduction

Whether or not an organization actively cultivates a culture of inclusivity, the nonprofit professionals at all levels who comprise the organization can champion inclusivity in many small ways.

Cumulatively, many small steps towards inclusivity will positively transform your career, the trajectories of those around you, and throughout your career the small steps can positively impact the projects and tasks that you oversee. Such benefits will show-up in your effectiveness in serving community members and your impact leading teams that fulfill their highest potential. Research is solid on the benefits to inclusivity as well as trust and the detriments to sidelining them.

Waiting for your organization to structurally and culturally champion inclusivity allows for lost opportunities to make small differences today.

This week’s 2 Tips are for all professionals across all levels of discretionary power. These two tips can be undertaken quietly on an individual level or launched organization wide.

Tip 2

Annually, encourage your organization to survey for a.) commitment to inclusivity as well as b.) trust. Use the results from the survey to drive infrastructure developments and share the results widely to show transparency and a commitment to learn and flourish as an organization. The benefits are directed toward all members of your organizational team through the positive impact of inclusivity and trust on the organizational culture and climate.

How can I survey for a commitment to inclusivity?

Don’t recreate the wheel. Borrow simple survey questions from sources that already exist. For example, Yale University has a straight-forward set of six questions under diversity. Pricewaterhouse Coopers also has a useful survey to explore the intentionality, or lack thereof, of inclusivity in an organization. And NASA, too, has a lengthy survey that you can borrow questions from to best explore inclusivity in your community-based organization (refer to page 64 in the Appendix) (also notice that NASA publicly shares the results of their survey).

How can I survey for trust?

Trust in one’s organization is linked to the alignment of values and behavior, primarily demonstrated by organizational leadership. Some survey questions around inclusivity resonate with the degree of trust that staff have for the organization – their peers, leadership, and the direction of the organization. For example, the American Psychological Association has a survey on the workplace experience with four specific questions about trust (refer to page 22 of the pdf). Additionally, the Institute for Public Relations provides several layers, or dimensions, to measuring trust in a workplace which can be gleaned for the purposes of creating a short survey for your organization (refer to page 9 of the pdf).

Why did we develop 2 Tips videos?

The Anchoring Success team trusts the talent and sophistication of professionals in community-based nonprofit organizations. We know that many professionals and organizational leaders do not have the funds to partner with specialists (like us) and/or the time to strategize on what might seem like extra projects.

Therefore, we launched these 2 Tips videos to support you with making tweaks, adjustments, and refinements in programs and operations — doable for busy professionals like you!