When MacArthur’s People and Culture team was established in 2016, one of our first priorities was to assess the state of the Foundation’s recruitment and diversity efforts. For a number of reasons, including high Staff engagement and relatively few structural changes over the years, we had experienced exceedingly low turnover and very few open positions. We were about to enter a new era. The introduction of Big Bets represented not only a significant shift in our programmatic approach, but also in how work was staffed and supported at all levels across the organization. The new recruitment volume was unprecedented at the time and continues today.
We were fortunate that our strong reputation as an employer-of-choice within the philanthropic sector resulted in a robust following over the years, so we did not historically suffer from a lack of candidates—in quantity or quality. However, it quickly became clear that our reach and recruitment footprint were both limited and limiting; we knew there was much more we could do to reach a diverse pool of candidates.
Our Talent Acquisition Manager, a newly created role, led the launch of an expansion program to research, identify, and incorporate an array of partners, posting sites, schools, networking affiliations, and pipeline programs to proactively reach a variety of underrepresented populations and backgrounds. In cases where we engaged a search firm, we began incorporating additional factors into the selection process, including the firm’s success in reaching non-traditional candidates, as well as demonstrated efforts to hold themselves accountable to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices within their own organizations.
Demographics and Data-Informed Decision Making
In the spirit of “you can’t address what you don’t know,” we also introduced several reporting tools to help our team better identify and address potential pain points and hold ourselves accountable. We began tracking multiple facets of diversity at every stage of each recruitment to pinpoint where we might be missing the mark.
We began tracking multiple facets of diversity at every stage of each recruitment to pinpoint where we might be missing the mark.
If the initial pool of applicants consistently lacked diversity, we needed to revisit and expand our recruitment partners, posting sites, and networks. If the pool of candidates we selected for interviews consistently lacked diversity, we needed to take a hard look at our selection criteria and screening mechanisms. If the finalists consistently lacked diversity, we needed to test our internal interview process. And if our selected candidates consistently lacked diversity, we needed to look inward to identify potential biases, and perhaps question our own assumptions and comfort zones.
It took a few years to begin seeing sustained results and for some of the new partnerships to take hold. And while we do not have, and will never have, specific diversity goals, our hard work and intentional shifts have resulted in some significant change at the Foundation since 2018, including:
- A 16 percent increase in Staff who identify as people of color;
- A 19 percent increase in Staff who identify as Black in the executive/senior level management category; and
- A 27 percent increase in individuals who identify as Millennials.
In addition, women continue to make up roughly 65 percent of our executive/senior level management—representation consistent with that of the organization and field, and higher than many of our peers. This all comes despite a turnover rate which remains very low, and counter to what most organizations and sectors are experiencing due to COVID-19 and the subsequent and rapid changes to how people work.
While this progress and hard work is to be celebrated, we also recognize there is still, and will always be, more work to do. For example, Hispanic and Latino/a/x representation has remained relatively static at the Foundation and well behind representation in Chicago and the U.S., despite continued and targeted network expansion and diversification.
Transparency and Accountability
Of course, our own evolution is not occurring in a vacuum but instead in an environment where foundations are increasingly holding grantees and partners accountable for their diversity efforts. As a result, it is imperative that we not only hold ourselves to the same standards we require of others, but that we additionally make our own practices, data, and learnings transparent for others given the immense privilege of our Foundation resources, budget, and staffing.
While this progress and hard work is to be celebrated, we also recognize there is still, and will always be, more work to do.
We first published comprehensive Staff and Board demographic data on our website in 2018, initiating an annual practice of ensuring we communicate—both internally and externally—a commitment to holding ourselves accountable and improving our data collection efforts. As we look back on five years of reporting, we can already see the impact of our commitment to our values of DEI and Learning and what we refer to as the Just Imperative in helping to build and sustain a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization. And as the field continues to evolve so do our practices.
In 2020, we assessed our demographic categories to better reflect the shifting ways in which Staff identify. As a result, the previous category of gender has since been sectioned into the categories of sex and gender to differentiate between the two and to provide additional visibility to gender identity. We updated the categories and descriptions under race and ethnicity to better reflect evolving language and classifications. We also included disability in our data reporting, which had previously only been collected internally. And for the first time, we included a category for LGBTQ+ self-identification.
As we keep a pulse on the ever-changing landscape of language and identity, we will continue to partner with and learn from our internal partners in Communications, Evaluation & Learning, and Grants Management to ensure our data and journey is clear and visible, while staying in step with the expectations and challenges of our grantees. Ultimately, our goal must continue to be this: to ensure our Staff and Board are able to see themselves reflected in our demographics data and to continue to strive, as an organization, to better reflect the places where we live and the communities we serve.
Stay Informed