Preparing the Organization to Address Social Justice and Racial Equity

• The Challenge
• Promising Practices
• Benchmarks

BENCHMARKS OF PROGRESS

One challenge facing philanthropy is to evaluate its effects or benefits. There is great demand for techniques that assess impact, measure results, or mark progress. An approach that fits the theory of action in this project is to gather evidence that shows progress on the different pathways.

Each of the benchmarks below is linked to Challenges that need to be addressed, using Promising Practices. Making progress on this pathway, along with the other pathways, is thought to be connected to the overall goal of “improving the bottom line” of disparities reduction.

In other words, you can give your philanthropy high marks for progress achieved on this pathway when you see signs that…

• The problems of injustice or inequity are of greater interest and taken more seriously by the organization’s leadership than used to be.
• The leadership of the organization more readily recognizes how its mission is adversely affected by unfairness in the operation of society’s systems and markets, and is better able to see a constructive role for itself
• More people in the organization are more willing to explore opportunities for addressing such issues.
• The organization is getting a wider range of views on these issues than before.
• The challenge of addressing issues of justice or equity is rising on our organization’s priority list.
• There's more organizational development going on inside to prepare and position the organization to play a more useful role.
• Other, good organizations are more willing to work with ours on these issues;

This page updated 19 August 2008