After the release of its initial report, Opportunity in Change: Preparing Boston for Leader Transitions and New Models of Nonprofit Leadership which was co-authored with TSNE, the Boston Foundation’s Nonprofit Effectiveness program hosted a forum with the Building Movement Project and a panel of local community leaders outlining the findings published in their new report Race to Lead.
Studies show the percentage of people of color in executive director/CEO roles has remained under 20% for the last 15 years, even as the country and the people nonprofits serve have become more and more diverse. To understand the causes of this disparity, the Building Movement Project conducted a survey with more than 4,000 nonprofits on the topic of nonprofits, leadership, and race.
Co-sponsored by the Boston Foundation and Barr Foundation, Race to Lead report authors Sean Thomas-Breitfeld and Frances Kunreuther, along with a panel including TSNE’s own Trina Jackson, Practice Leader for Community Engagement, discussed the report’s results with new analysis of Massachusetts data which calls into question the common assumption that to increase the diversity of nonprofit leaders, people of color need more training. The findings point to a new narrative: to increase the number of people of color as leaders, the nonprofit sector needs to begin by addressing the practices and biases of nonprofit organizations themselves.
View the forum:
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