Ideals in Action

How five nonprofit organizations made progress on the road toward inclusion

One way a nonprofit organization can extend its reach into the community it serves is by making

changes within its own walls. And the paths to creating those changes vary greatly.

A charity can work harder to recruit people who reflect its clients. An organization can reserve seats on its board for people who have benefited from its programs. It can open its doors to those who have stumbled early in life and need a second chance to build a career. It can reach out to new arrivals in its community by learning to speak their language and understand their culture. It can expand its pool of donors by asking for help from people who have never before been approached. And it can tie all of those efforts to its ultimate goal of carrying out its mission successfully.

Such changes make a difference not only to nonprofit organizations that run charitable programs and conduct advocacy.

Grant makers have also been looking for ways to change their own organizations and push their grantees to do the same. Perhaps the best-known and most-copied effort is at the Ford Foundation, where the philanthropy has been making a big push on diversity for more than 30 years.

Ford’s efforts are the reason that many grant makers now ask applicants for aid to supply detailed information about how their programs and staff reflect the communities they serve.

As charity leaders proceed to make their organizations more diverse, they can expect some growing pains. One way to ease the challenge is to make sure that a large number of minorities are appointed to trustee jobs and hired into a charity’s work force, so that people who have not been in such roles before can help one another handle leadership responsibilities, says Dorothy Stoneman, head of YouthBuild USA.

On this and the following pages are five snapshots of nonprofit groups that have made significant strides in making themselves more inclusive and reflective of the people they serve.