Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We are committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

Our mission statement puts justice first, as do we. We are guided by our values and live our mission through the Just Imperative, which charges us to lead with a commitment to justice.

Through the Just Imperative, we ensure that our decisions and actions are rooted in the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion by embracing the unique attributes of all individuals; creating a fair playing field for all; and cultivating environments where everyone feels respected, valued, and a sense of belonging.

Our commitment to justice begins with our staffing and operations. We actively seek a diverse Staff. We benefit as individuals and the work is better because of our Staff’s diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, and lived experiences. Diversity includes all the ways that people differ, encompassing the characteristics that make people distinct from one another.

We also actively seek to:

engage a diverse pool of businesses, consultants, contractors, and investment managers;
elevate the voices of individuals and organizations not always heard in policy and in grantmaking strategies; and
ensure that our grantmaking considers and supports a broad diversity of organizations and helps to address historic and structural inequities.

Our mission statement puts justice first, as do we. We are guided by our values and live our mission through the Just Imperative, which charges us to lead with a commitment to justice.

We also actively seek to:

engage a diverse pool of businesses, consultants, contractors, and investment managers;
elevate the voices of individuals and organizations not always heard in policy and in grantmaking strategies; and
ensure that our grantmaking considers and supports a broad diversity of organizations and helps to address historic and structural inequities.

What We’re Doing

Our many activities include:

Grantmaking

Many of the traditional practices in philanthropy, including some of our organizational, grantmaking, and investment practices, have helped maintain inequities in the United States and around the world. We are consciously seeking to address this bias, by centering equity in our grantmaking and impact investing. We aimed to disrupt this status quo with our Equitable Recovery Initiative. Over time, our goal is to fund a more diverse set of organizations and support grantee and impact investee organizations in their efforts to become more diverse and inclusive.

Broader Recruitment

We have added new recruiting partners, resources, and strategies to help us reach and identify a more diverse pool of candidates for all positions. We conduct significant outreach to ensure that candidates for our summer internships include young people of color, creating a pool of talent for future opportunities in philanthropy.

Staff Training and Policies

Our Code of Conduct obliges all Staff to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the highest professional and ethical standards. We also require Staff to undergo periodic mandatory management, legal, anti-harassment, and racial equity trainings.

Staff Engagement

Our Staff are leaders of and participants in various philanthropy affinity groups that reflect the diversity of the Foundation and the sector. We are active in our local communities, as volunteers, teachers, religious leaders, and engaged residents, and the Foundation actively creates and supports opportunities for volunteering and being present in our communities.

Information Sharing

We post annual information about the composition of our Staff and Board to hold ourselves accountable and to encourage others to do the same. The Foundation collects and reports on the categories of race and ethnicity, sex and gender, disability, and LGBTQ+ identity for our Staff and Board.

We also collect demographic data on all U.S.-based organizations we support through grants and impact investments. The survey results are invaluable as we examine our practices and processes with an eye toward equity. We believe that the best, most impactful work results from organizations with staff who represent a variety of backgrounds and experiences and that center the voices of people who know and understand the communities we seek to serve. We recognize we have work to do to achieve this ideal, among our Staff and the organizations we choose to support.

It is a Journey

We recognize that this is a high standard, hard work, and a journey that does not end. It will require all of us to do the work at the individual, interpersonal, organizational, and systemic levels. We will not get it right every time; but what is important is the commitment and consistent efforts to incorporate the Just Imperative into our work and our lives.