Rolling Out a Platform to Provide Diversity Data

(Danielle Deane is director at Green 2.0 and principal at The Raben Group.)

Transparency and accountability are great goals but without data, it is like a stool with two legs. Good luck with that.  Consistent, visible data and goals keep us on a stable platform, and allows organizations and leaders to learn, build and improve. Data about who is leading and working in organizations is just as important as financials and environmental or social change indicators to understanding how an NGO or foundation works and its responsiveness to community needs.

Enter Green 2.0. Launched earlier this year, Green 2.0 advocates for improved diversity in the mainstream environmental movement. Partnering with GuideStar, a highly regarded information service  that organizes and provides data on over one and half million nonprofit organizations, and the D5 Coalition, an unprecedented coalition of leading philanthropy associations and foundations committed to taking on the critical issue of diversity, we rolled out a groundbreaking diversity data tracking effort. The effort brings a set of uniform and simple data standards to help nonprofits and foundations voluntarily report and collect information about their organization’s demographics for board members, staff and volunteers. The voluntary program within the GuideStar Exchange is the only program of its kind that encourages nonprofit transparency, allows nonprofits to supplement public information available from the IRS, and allows tracking on a scale we haven’t seen before — with the potential to reach 1.8 million nonprofits.  The need for this especially in the environmental field is clear.

Green 2.0 recently released the comprehensive report "Diversity in Environmental Institutions: Mainstream NGOs, Foundations and Government Agencies" commissioned from Professor Dorceta Taylor. The report documents the problematic "green ceiling"— the failure of mainstream environmental organizations to keep up with the changing face of America. Although people of color comprise about 38% of the U.S. population, they occupy, on average less than 12% of staff at these organizations. The numbers at the board level are even lower – for example on average 95% of mainstream NGO boards are white; 85 % of foundation boards are white.  These numbers have not budged much over the last decade, though a promising trend is that white women have seen significant gains below the board level.

To quote one foundation leader, Steven Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund:

“As a funder we believe it is important to understand both the diversity of the organizations we fund and how they engage diverse perspectives in their work….We are excited to participate in the GuideStar Exchange effort and encourage others to do so. This builds on the work of many organizations over the past few years, and we are particularly appreciative of the efforts of GuideStar, D5, and Green 2.0 to make this happen.” (Statements from other leaders are here.)

In addition to bringing attention to diversity across these organizations, we also want to provide the best practices that many groups need to improve their environments. With that in mind, we are building on the work that Glasspockets has done in encouraging greater foundation transparency. The resources webpage of Green 2.0’s website features the ten foundations (among those that are ranked within the top 50 environmental funders by the Foundation Center) that have made a commitment to transparency on Glasspockets, and have indicated that they disclose diversity data or have statements regarding their commitment to transparency.

Our success will come through our growing list of strategic partners that similarly view diversity as an integral part of today’s corporate and nonprofit business models. Our success will also come through our work with you.

Advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in philanthropy will help organizations better achieve their missions. So, what can you do? Three things:

• Nonprofits and funders, pledge to submit your data on GuideStar
• Funders, share your transparency profile on Glasspockets
• Let your grantees know you encourage them to submit their data. For environmental NGOs and foundations, we hope to have organizations pledge to submit data by the end of this year (2014), and submit data in early 2015.
• Everyone, share your success stories and strategies with us at www.diversegreen.org

Foundations have a key role to play in ensuring that we see dramatically better diversity numbers in five years than what we’ve seen over the last decade. Shining a light on the challenges and solutions will lead to that improvement. We look forward to your support.

-- Danielle Deane