According to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, business has emerged as the most trusted institution during the pandemic. GlobalGiving CEO Alix Guerrier reflects on the unique opportunity for businesses and nonprofits to take collective action to advance social change.
A: I certainly rely on my background in education and my time as a classroom teacher when I think about some of these issues. From my perspective, the core problem in education in the US is one of equity. At least, that is why I became a teacher: because my own educational experience showed me that access and opportunity can be systematically withheld on the basis of race, gender, income, and other factors. The entirety of my time in the education field included an explicit focus on these issues. However, almost all of my experience is in the American context. Even with an international family, I have a lot to learn about how to make progress around the world.
A: I believe the first step for us was to make an honest assessment of our starting point. We were in a beginning state; for example, we didn’t have a good way on our site to find projects focused on racial justice. We started there with some of the basics, like rethinking our project themes. From there, we have a number of ways to learn, grow, and improve. Of those, I’d highlight the responsibility we have to listen to the nonprofit partners we have working on this issue (like the ones listed in that piece from last year!) It’s a privilege and a responsibility for us—we get to learn from their approaches and should work to amplify their work.
A: Prioritization can help turn a very daunting task (“let’s improve our DEI”) into meaningful progress.
It is critical to remember that when we’re talking about businesses, companies, and nonprofit organizations, we are actually talking about groups of individual people—the leaders and staff of these entities—who are each taking action every day.
This framing allows us to make racial justice actionable because every decision taken by an organization’s leaders and staff is an opportunity to advance the social change they desire to see. A company’s leadership can then prioritize: for which activities and decisions would they like to work on change first? Their choice will help determine with whom they should partner.
A: Our most daunting challenge: scale. Our model of partnership with global nonprofits is heavy on person-to-person interactions. We take phone calls. We know the names of our project leaders, and they know the names of members of our team who are working on their behalf. However, we also raised more than $100 million last year, and we’re working hard to get to half a billion and beyond. Technology is surely part of the solution in our desire to preserve the personal relationships we have with our partners as we grow, but we must also be careful because overreliance on technology can leave some folks behind.
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