My “Inclusivity: Just Do It” post from August 7th led to an interesting e-mail conversation with Shawn Lewis, a board member of the Pan African Community Endowment of The Saint Paul Foundation, an MCF member organization.
Lewis sent me some of his own “just do it” ideas to create career pathways that will increase diversity and inclusion in the field of philanthropy. He pointed out that more educational and employment opportunities are needed to welcome diverse candidates into the sector. He advocates for more developmental opportunities, too, such as internships, apprenticeships, fellowships and mentorships.
Lewis’ ideas reminded me of an article I read a couple months ago about an initiative in Cleveland, Ohio, to increase the diversity of nonprofits by identifying minority professionals for open board seats. The program, the Minority Board Member Pipeline Initiative, grew out of a response to an Urban Institute study that found that nonprofit boards of public charities are overwhelming white and disconnected from the communities they serve.
Increasing connections among grantmakers is another idea that Lewis proposed to me. He noted that more interaction between and among MCF and its strategic partners, such as Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Native Americans in Philanthropy and Minnesota Blacks in Philanthropy, will help everyone learn from each other.
Join the conversation: How do you think we should fill our field’s pipeline with talented, diverse candidates? If you’re a leader in the philanthropic or nonprofit communities, how did you gain the awareness and experience to achieve your position? What new connections and conversations between diverse groups will lead to greater inclusivity in our work?
- Wendy Wehr, MCF V.P. of Communications and Information Services
September 4, 2008 at 2:41 pm |
I am a board member of the National Center for Black Philanthropy in Washington, DC and a current and past board member of several local nonprofits here in the Twin Cities. I absolutely agree with my friend Shawn Lewis and he and I have had this discussion between us and others.
While I agree with Shawn, I feel his idea, as communicated, only helps in the near to short-term. I beleive there should be an effort to open the employment mindset of high school and college students of the careers open in the nonprofit and/or philanthropic sectors.
I am a for-profit financial advisor who uses his business to help fulfill my social mission. As I go from high school and college job fairs, the only nonprofits I see participating are the very large national nonprofits like the American Red Cross or Americorps. There are no nonprofits ED’s asked to speak, nor are there people from the foundation sector, public or private. Moreover, most of these students are taught to “go for the money” and nonprofits are taken off the proverbial map.
My experience for over thirty years as a nonprofit volunteer and/or board member lets me know that nonprofits need business majors, public policy majors and students that have a myriad of other collegiate majors -that could be used and insrtumental in a nonprofit’s success. The problem – no one’s recruiting them or letting the recruiters know that these skills being learned are vitally useful to a nonprofit as well as the for-profit. In other words , they don’t know the opportunity exists or haven’t learned enough about the opportunity to be curious.
Personally, I encourage young people to look at the nonprofit sector and if that’s not their choice I encourage them to be self-employed like me so they can create jobs. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many that will opt for insecurity (irregular paychecks) of self-employment.
Thank you for listening,
Walter C. Gray, CRPC
Financial Advisor
Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor
Ameriprise Financial