Equity Archives - Nicole Clark Consulting

18 Jan, 2023

Try This: Equity Focused Conversations

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-01-20T15:29:10-05:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Equity, Human Centered Design, program design, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out, and let me know how it goes for you.*

During Summer 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, I participated in a conversation with evaluators who were both working as independent consultants and on staff.

A question was posed:

How can we keep equity at the forefront?

At the time, most of my client organizations had turned their attention to shifting to remote work. One client was already working remotely before the shelter in place orders began. However, they did experience drastic shifts in their programming.

Staff had to figure out what was “essential” and what wasn’t in terms of how programs were implemented and how these changes would impact staff capacity.

Being nimble is a way of life for my clients. We discuss how this nimbleness can be applied to how they think program implementation. At this time, clients were making quick decisions on which programs were still operational without being in person. If programming could no longer operate as intended, we questioned 1) what can be learned from this, 2) how can they pivot programs deem essential to their work, 3) what qualifies a program as “non-essential”, and 4) how can they make a “non-essential” program more “essential” in the future?

While we focused on supporting our clients, we also felt the uncertainty in our work as evaluators. From paused projects to adjusting how we work, we were challenged with examining current norms, creating new ones, and discovering for ourselves what equity looks like during an pandemic that has illuminated racial, economic, and other public health disparities.

How can equity focused questions lead to organizational change?

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone leading internal organizational equity based initiatives
Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

Schedule time for this activity, where you can work with minimal interruption. Make sure to schedule breaks!
Whatever setup you use to capture your process (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.). Make sure it’s kept in a place that you can refer back to

The steps:

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11 Jan, 2023

How “Sending the Elevator Back Down” Promotes Equity

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-03-15T11:54:29-04:00January 11th, 2023|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: Equity, Mentoring|0 Comments

*How can “sending the elevator back down” promote equity?*

January is National Mentorship Month, highlighting the power of mentorship and its benefits.

Mentoring fosters trust and understanding between a more experienced person (mentor) and someone with less experience (mentee). Ideally, mentoring is mutually beneficial, provides routine exchange of perspectives, and builds on knowledge and trust.

Mentorship between students and educators and between industry experts and people new to their industry are two examples of how mentorship typically play out. Being mentored by someone who has experienced what you’re going through helps to avoid pitfalls.

There are many people I can name who have served as mentors for me, both academically and professionally. As someone who seeks advice and has provided advice, I’m growing more curious about 1) whether mentorship is truly beneficial and 2) whether mentorship promotes equity.

The phrase “send the elevator back down” is credited to French actress and singer-songwriter Édith Piaf. I don’t remember where I first heard this phrase, but it’s stayed with me. When someone sends the elevator back down for others, several things can happen. It creates opportunities for visibility, creating space for mentees to join mentors on the elevator. It also encourages mentors to not only make space, but to let go. For others to have these leadership experiences and become more visible, leaders have to be ok with making space and letting go.

But what happens when mentors are better at one and not the other?

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9 Mar, 2022

Self Care Corner: Representation Burnout

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2023-09-28T14:57:45-04:00March 9th, 2022|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Burnout, DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Self Care Corner|0 Comments

I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for nearly 2 years. Mostly because it’s complicated to talk about.

Representation burnout.

I first came across this term via Shine’s article “Why We Need to Talk About – and Recognize – Representation Burnout” by Martha Tesema.

The article was posted a year before George Floyd was murdered in May 2020. The day after his murder, I facilitated a partnership meeting for a client organization. I joined the Zoom meeting several minutes early with the partnership co-leads, after spending the day looking at news coverage of George’s murder.

I admitted to them that I wasn’t fully present, yet I still wanted to fully show up. I also admitted it at the start of the meeting with the partners.

In Nonprofit Quarterly article “The Hidden Cost of DEI Work –And What to Do About It,” , co-author Tiloma Jayasinghe asks questions that perfectly sums up how I often feel:

What if I, the professional facilitator, break down in tears in front of a full Zoom room of clients because this work, and the stakes if it fails, feels like I am letting BIPOC people down and ruining this small opening for workplace liberation?

How am I supposed to cope with race equity work when another Black trans woman was murdered today, and/or last night another Asian elder was hit and painfully injured on the Lower East Side of New York City, and/or how many hundreds of Black people have been murdered since brother George Floyd took his last breath? Where is the outrage for them?

When and how do I just pause and stop so that I can rest, recharge, so that I can be on this journey for the long haul?

“The Hidden Cost of DEI Work–And What to Do About It” by Andrea J. Rogers and Tiloma Jayasinghe (Nonprofit Quarterly, 2021)

When people see me, they see a Black woman, because we’re visual. Getting to know me, you’ll discover that I’m a Black cisgender heterosexual woman. Going deeper, you’ll discover that I’m a Black cisgender heterosexual woman, from the south, an identical twin, has a bachelors degree from a HBCU and a masters degree from an Ivy League, became motherless at age 17, grew up in Christianity, full time self employed for 6 years, a New York City transplant for 11 years, now resides in Washington, DC, and so on.

Like you, I have multiple identities and lived experiences. Also like you, the identity that gets the most prominence largely depends on the space I walk into.

And sometimes, these identities are the only reasons we’re allowed into spaces in the first place.

How do we deal with this?

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21 Jul, 2021

Try This: The RFP “YES” Checklist

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:11:52-04:00July 21st, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, Equity, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out and let me know how it goes.*

Last week, I posed 7 questions to consider before sending out a Request for Proposals (RFP) to evaluate whether your organization’s process for securing consultants is equitable.

Also occurring last week, I responded to a RFP. There were several reasons why I responded (knowing the person who sent it, interest in working with the organization, having the skillset needed, the project focus, etc.). However, I responded because this RFP:

Was clear, concise, and outlined everything I needed to know
Included the statement: “In line with our focus on equity and evaluation, we aim to reduce the burden on interested applicants.”
Limited the proposal to 5-7 pages
Was explicit in requesting proposals from independent consultants as well as partners
Included in the proposal requirements: “A brief work plan of the steps you propose, which we recognize are subject to change”
Lists the qualifications they’re looking for, but also stated they understood that no applicant or proposal will meet all qualifications
Specified that the proposal submission is the first step in a longer conversation with their time, with a small number of applicants being asked to have a brief phone call with the team
Didn’t request additional documents (most likely because they knew they would’t read through them)
The project sounds really interesting

What’s most impressive is that this RFP came from a philanthropic organization. When I emailed my proposal, I complimented the staff on how equitable their RFP was. The only thing the RFP didn’t disclose was the budget (and last week’s post shares why disclosing it is important.)

Regardless of the selection outcome, I hope this is the start of organizations developing more RFP equitable practices.

What makes you say “YES!” to responding to a Request for Proposals (RFP)?

Do you have a standard list of requirements? Are they consistent across RFPs, or do you make considerations based on situational factors?

Let’s create your RFP “YES!” checklist.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone wanting a proactive approach to considering whether to submit a response to a Request for Proposals (RFPs).
Anyone responsible for creating RFPs

Here’s what you need:

Whatever setup you use to capture your ideas (laptop, pen and paper, whiteboard, etc.) but make sure it’s kept in a place that you can refer back to

The steps:

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15 Jul, 2021

Putting Equity in the RFP Process

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:10:56-04:00July 15th, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, Equity|0 Comments

When I first started doing client work, I responded to a lot of Requests for Proposals (RFPs), spending hours a day on the process (or on the weekends when I was working a 9-to-5.)

At some point, I asked myself, “Is this really what I’ll have to do to get clients?”

More importantly, “Is this a good use of my time?”

I’ve already written about how I feel about the RFP process. In fact, I’ve slowed down on responding to RFPs altogether as a time management tactic and to prioritize current work.

Fortunately, I’m at a point where responding to RFPs is optional. Plus, I see more colleagues choosing not to participate in this process.. One reason being that the majority of my colleagues (and myself) get more work via referrals and networking than RFPs.

I’ll admit I initially didn’t like the RFP process because I grew weary of spending hours putting together what I thought was a good proposal only to not even get a “thanks, but no thanks” back.

However, whether my proposal was selected or not, I still walked away believing that there’s a better way to go about finding people to lead projects.

While I don’t respond to as many RFPs, I still do look at them, and I’ve notice something interesting.

Organizations are becoming increasingly better at recognizing what I’ll refer to as data collection fatigue, being mindful of inundating program participants, grantee partners, and other stakeholders with requests for completing surveys, being in focus groups, etc., while also ensuring that data collection activities aren’t time consuming.

Organizations recognize this now because their stakeholders are complaining about it.

Does this mean that consultants aren’t complaining? We are, yet organizations aren’t shifting towards creating RFP processes that are transparent, less time consuming, and collaborative.

The RFP process may be a standard way to seek out consultants to work with, but it’s not an equitable process. Before your organization sends out the RFP for its next project, evaluate your RFP based on consultant complaints:

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Try This: Equity Focused Conversations

How “Sending the Elevator Back Down” Promotes Equity

Self Care Corner: Representation Burnout

Try This: The RFP “YES” Checklist

Putting Equity in the RFP Process

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