Thriving Together in Equitable, Resilient, Connected Communities

District Bridges strives to be an organization:

  • that reflects the communities we serve and acts on our commitment to diversity and inclusion;
  • that acknowledges institutional and systemic factors contributing to oppression and privilege and actively seeks to dismantle them, both internally and externally;
  • where persons of color occupy and retain senior leadership and decision-making positions; and 
  • that actively works internally, across our communities, and with partners to promote anti-racism.

In furtherance of these goals, we are focused on three key areas including:

Program 

  1. Articulate how persons of color are disproportionately impacted by the issues we work on and how DB is working programmatically to combat this. 
  2. Clarify how DB advocates for the inclusion of racial equity issues when working in coalition or partnership with other groups.
  3. Identify how we can better acknowledge and integrate the various cultural experiences of our stakeholders into our work.
  4. Identify best practices and develop a racial equity impact analysis for use when proposing internal practices, procedures, and policies, ensuring that this is also reflected in our strategy screen. 

People, Policies, and Culture 

  1. Break out our anti-harassment policy so that it is more accessible and readable.
  2. Identify best practices and develop a policy for diversifying vendors to focus on local organizations owned by persons of color. 
  3. Identify how we can improve our benefits package to reflect the varying needs of our team members of color and resources needed to implement, and develop both plan to implement and regular feedback loops to ensure team members are able to inform us of additional needs. Identify and set aside resources for staff training to ensure the team has tools to address issues of racism and other forms of oppression as they arise in work.
  4. Revisit performance measures and determine how best to incorporate evaluation around staff’s ability to respond to race-based oppression and advance racial equity in their work.
  5. Identify ways the organization can better encourage, welcome, and celebrate multiple forms of cultural expression in the workplace setting and implement.
  6. Identify ways the organization can better reflect, affirm, and welcome our team members’ experiences in the ways we come together as a community.

Power

  1. Identify and create ways to ensure DB is accountable to and seeks input/leadership from persons of color within our own community.
  2. Share Board Matrix with staff and identify opportunities to strengthen staff/board relationships.
  3. Update Accountability chart to better reflects decision-making power in the organization and articulate inequities.
  4. Identify and establish institutionalized ways that we can support and build up the capacity and leadership of our team members of color.
  5. Ensure that our budget and resources demonstrate our commitment to racial equity.