Leading the Way

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast two years ago, the American Red Cross learned a lot of lessons

from its response to the disaster. Among them was one about diversity: To offer effective relief to disaster victims, the charity needs to aggressively recruit staff members and volunteers who have more in common with the people it is trying to help.

During the days and weeks after the storm, language and cultural barriers created serious miscommunication, misunderstanding, and mistrust between the largely white volunteer corps and the black, Hispanic, Vietnamese, and Korean residents of the gulf region, says D. Eric (Rick) Pogue, who last month left his post as chief diversity officer at the Washington headquarters of the 126-year-old charity.

Especially in such frightening and bewildering situations as storms, he notes, “people typically gravitate to people with whom they identify, and our volunteer ranks and shelter managers just did not reflect these vast populations.” Even small obstacles, such as reluctance among volunteers to pronounce “foreign” last names, resulted in delays of service. As a result, he says, the charity wasn’t able to help everyone who needed assistance.

The lack of attention the Red Cross gave to minorities had widespread and long-lasting consequences: Just last month, a House of Representatives committee held a hearing, triggered largely by Hurricane Katrina, to examine how much charities do for minorities, and lawmakers asked Red Cross officials tough questions about what they have done to overcome the problems.

New Officials

While not every charity has been caught short in the same way that the Red Cross was after Katrina, several national groups are designating senior-level managers to lead efforts to make their staffs and volunteer forces more diverse. In August, the Council on Foundations appointed its first officer designated to oversee diversity issues, and large national nonprofit groups, like the American Cancer Society, have also created diversity-officer posts in the last couple of years.

At some charities, putting an official in charge of diversity efforts has been a long tradition. United Way of America, in Alexandria, Va., for instance, has had such a post for two decades, says Deborah W. Foster, the group’s executive vice president for strategic alliances and inclusion.

She says it is hard to ensure progress unless at least one charity official is responsible for promoting diversity.

“When you think of how things are done in nonprofits, with limited resources, someone has to be tasked with it,” says Ms. Foster, a 30-year United Way veteran who has held her current post for two years.

But the job of leading an organization’s diversity effort can be challenging. Five people have held the top diversity job at Catholic Charities USA since it was created seven years ago. The Red Cross established its chief-diversity-officer position 12 years ago, but the last two jobholders, including Mr. Pogue, left after a year or two each, while the American Cancer Society’s founding diversity director retired after just one year in the job.

John Keightley, executive vice president of Catholic Charities, in Alexandria, Va., notes that while individuals come and go for their own reasons, “it would be fair to say that the kinds of issues we’re trying to deal with are very difficult, and fundamental cultural change in an organization takes time.”

Rank and Power

Ensuring that a diversity officer holds a senior rank at an organization is the strongest signal of a group’s commitment to the ideal of diversity, says Gwendolyn Crider, executive director of the National MultiCultural Institute, in Washington.

“Is this just an additional human-resource person or a strategic partner who reports to the executive?” Ms. Crider asks. “Sometimes you can send mixed messages, if you establish the position but don’t give them the visibility and authority to make changes.”

Ms. Crider, whose group gives an annual award to charities for their diversity efforts, says it is too early to tell whether diversity officers appointed by charities are making a difference, since most of the appointments are so recent. Among the criteria she thinks will be telling as she watches their progress, however: Does the diversity officer have the authority to make attendance at diversity training mandatory? Will such sessions be coupled with the creation of other major strategies for their organizations? How will the achievements of the diversity officer be communicated to the rest of the organization?

‘Diversity Ambassadors’

In the two years since it was humbled by its experiences with Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Pogue and his staff have established relationships with the Congressional caucuses that represent minorities, put in place efforts to recruit and train a more diverse volunteer force, and struck partnerships with local institutions, such as churches, to create additional shelter capacity and to ensure that no one is left without help when the next disaster strikes.

“A large part of what we call ‘lessons learned post-Katrina’ is that we need more partners,” Mr. Pogue says.

The Red Cross also created a series of internal staff positions called “diversity ambassadors,” charged with visiting distinct ethnic neighborhoods to assess their readiness and their needs in the face of the next crisis.

“The first person we deployed happened to be a Korean speaker who went to Baton Rouge, La., and within 24 hours signed up over a dozen Korean-speaking volunteers,” Mr. Pogue says.

Despite these sorts of successes, he acknowledged, it is not always easy to encourage such a large, established organization to embrace change. One challenge has been to reorient the Red Cross’s approach to establishing disaster shelters.

In the past, the organization would go in and tell people exactly how the shelter should be planned and operated, Mr. Pogue says. As staff members and volunteers become more “culturally competent,” or better prepared to encounter and negotiate cultural differences among the various populations it serves, they start to recognize that there are various ways of approaching the same goals, he says: “You go in and speak to targeted populations, and instead of telling them what to do, you ask, ‘How would this work best for you?’”

Building Trust

More than a year ago, the American Cancer Society, in Atlanta, created the role of chief diversity officer (The Chronicle, August 17, 2006). Aurelia Stanley, who took the job, has since retired, and now the organization is seeking her replacement.

Laura Reeves, who is leading the recruitment effort at the American Cancer Society, noted that as part of the charity’s mission to eliminate cancer, the organization must find ways to reduce the high rates of the disease among minority groups. To do this, Ms. Reeves says, “we need to retain a staff here that’s capable of building trust in the communities we serve.”

Although hiring more people who “look like” and “sound like” the people they serve is one important aspect of this goal, she says it is also crucial to train staff members and volunteers to increase their ability to deal with people of different backgrounds. The American Cancer Society has recently certified 100 staff members as trainers in a diversity development and education program that will be used by its affiliates. The program focuses on race and ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.

In addition to training its employees on diversity, Ms. Reeves said, the charity has established standards to gauge how it is doing in forging partnerships with external institutions, such as ethnic-oriented churches or social organizations, and how many of its donors are members of minority groups. It has also started a diversity-communications service, which has created brochures for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people warning against the dangers of tobacco use.

Learning more about how to reach out to more segments of America, Ms. Reeves says, will “help us address some of the socioeconomic and social disparities we see in health-care access and the way different communities use the health system.”

‘Racial Sobriety’

At Catholic Charities USA, which represents 1,700 Catholic social-service charities around the country, the Rev. Clarence Williams is pushing a concept he calls “racial sobriety,” a process of “recovering from the stereotypes and prejudices we carry with us and use to maintain distance from people different from ourselves.”

Father Williams started in August as the organization’s first director of racial equality and diversity initiatives. The title supplants the “diversity director” position that was created seven years ago.

Mr. Keightley, Catholic Charities’ executive vice president, says the organization developed the role as part of a new strategic plan designed to help the organization advocate for long-term changes in the conditions that cause poverty.

Noting that most of the clients served by the group’s local affiliates are members of minority groups, Mr. Keightley says, “if you wanted to address systemic change, you would not be looking at the whole picture if you didn’t grapple with race.”

Father Williams, who served as a consultant on diversity issues to Catholic Charities’ board for more than 10 years, says he hopes to foster a less hierarchical relationship between social-service providers and the people they help.

“What has been happening is that in working with poor, nonwhite populations, there’s a culture of ‘we’re going to work to help you, but we’re so different from you,’” Father Williams says. Staff members and volunteers have maintained a professional distance from clients, he notes, rather than “relating to people as our brothers and sisters — whatever the race, gender, or economic status.” He says this “case management” approach limits the charity’s ability to reach out to its clients effectively and compassionately.

He has helped Catholic Charities create training programs that focus on developing leaders who can help break down long-held stereotypes and prejudices within the institution. Starting next year, the group will offer its affiliates materials on topics like black culture, Hispanic culture, and women’s history. The organization will offer training sessions to regional and local directors, who can then customize and fine-tune the lessons before passing them on to their staff members and volunteers.

Father Williams says he will consider the program a success only if the training sessions are packed. “This is about changing the daily culture of how we go about our business,” he says, so that it is all in place during times of crisis. “The time to meet your neighbor is not when your house is on fire.”

Goals for Grant Makers

Some grant makers are also growing increasingly interested in expanding their ability to work and communicate with people of diverse cultures and values, says Renée Branch, who was hired in August as the first director of diversity and inclusive practices at the Council on Foundations, in Washington.

Ms. Branch, who reports directly to Steve Gunderson, the council’s chief executive, was previously an adjunct professor who had a hand in diversity recruitment efforts at Washington State University at Vancouver.

The council’s member philanthropies are doing more to focus their grant making on solving interconnected global social problems, says Ms. Branch, but effective remedies to today’s most pressing needs cannot occur, she says, “in a room with the same individuals we already connect with.”

In seeking to advance its discussion of diversity among grant makers, Ms. Branch says, the council will offer educational programs for grant makers and help them learn to recruit minorities and groom them for leadership jobs.

In addition, it plans to call attention to the importance of diversity among both foundations and the general public, and finance research that examines the impact of diverse boards and staffs on philanthropy.

The connection between diversity and long-term effectiveness is as important for grant makers as it is for the direct-service charities they support, says Mr. Gunderson.

“You’re just not as good as you can be, if you don’t have that diversity antennae,” he says.

He is particularly concerned with ensuring that a new generation of philanthropists has at least considered the importance of emphasizing diversity as it goes about establishing new family foundations.

“People who aren’t even in philanthropy today will be part of our benchmark 10 years from now,” he says. “How do we reach them? When people are looking at Philanthropy 101 in the future, we want diversity to be an automatic value and component.”

From his perspective, now is a crucial time for the council to establisha diversity officerrole and create the necessary programs, as well as start communicating strongly and publicly on the issue. “We have to talk not only to those who are professionally engaged in the field today,” he says, “but people on the street who are thinking of being involved one day.”

Heather Joslyn contributed to this article.