Five words get treated, depending on who is talking, as a slogan, a liability, or a line in a strategic plan nobody reads. I use all five on purpose. So I owe you a plain account of what each one means in a development office, and what it looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.
The short version, from our website:
- Diversity is about who is present.
- Equity is about whether the rules are fair.
- Inclusion is about whether people get to take part.
- Justice is about repairing what was unfair.
- Belonging is about whether people want to stay.
Each word asks a different question. That is the whole reason to keep all five. An organization can do well on one and badly on the next, and if you collapse them into a single word (or drop them altogether), you lose the ability to tell which problem you have.
Diversity: who is present
Diversity is a headcount question, and there’s no shame in that. Counting is where honesty starts.
In a development office, the useful count goes beyond staff. It covers everyone who shapes how money is raised: the development committee, the campaign cabinet, the volunteers who make calls, and the people who review the case for support before it goes to print. Look at who sits at those tables and compare it to the community your organization serves.
In practice. Before the next campaign planning meeting, list every person who will help decide the priorities and the prospect list. If the list is all major donors and trustees, add people who know the work from the inside: a parent whose family receives financial aid, a former program participant, a teacher or front-line staff member. Invite them as members, not guests.
Diversity alone doesn’t fix much. A room can be full of different people who aren’t allowed to change anything. That’s what the next four words are for.
Equity: whether the rules are fair
Equity looks past the people to the rules they live under: who gets access, who gets credit, and who pays the price of entry.
Development offices are full of rules no one remembers writing. Recognition levels. Event ticket prices. Which donors get a gift officer and which get a form letter. Board giving expectations.
In practice. Take the board giving policy. A fixed minimum gift for every trustee is simple to administer, and it quietly sets a price on a seat. The people priced out are often the ones whose perspective the board most needs. A fairer rule asks every trustee for a personally meaningful gift, expects full participation, and puts both in writing so the expectation is the same for everyone. Your total board giving may look different. So will your board.
I’ll concede the point: fixed minimums exist for real reasons, and some boards depend on that revenue. If yours does, say so openly and pair the minimum with another path to a seat. A rule can be firm and still be fair. It can’t be secret.
Inclusion: whether people get to take part
Inclusion is the difference between being on the list and being in the room. Someone can be present under fair rules and still find every door built for someone else.
In practice. Look at how volunteers and donors are asked to take part. If annual fund volunteer meetings happen at 4 p.m. on weekdays, in English only, in a building with stairs and no ramp, you’ve decided who can volunteer before anyone says yes. Offer an evening or virtual option. Translate the call script and talking points into the languages your families speak. Hold events where everyone can get in the door, and say on the invitation what access is available so no one has to ask.
Most of this is scheduling, not spending.
Justice: repairing what was unfair
Justice is the word organizations drop first, because it implies that something went wrong. Something did. That is the point of the word.
Any organization with a long enough history has a stretch it isn’t proud of: groups it kept out, people it treated as charity cases, neighbors it ignored. Justice is the work of naming that and doing something concrete about it, as repair rather than public relations.
In practice. Say your school or organization spent years making some of the people it served feel unwelcome: students who were out, families who couldn’t pay, the first of their background to walk through the door. Now your alumni office wants their gifts. Justice comes before the ask. Acknowledge the history plainly, in writing, from leadership. Ask those alumni what would repair it and listen to the answer, whether it is a scholarship they help design, a seat on a committee, or a policy change. Then act on it before anyone mentions a gift.
Repair takes time and sometimes money. The alternative is asking people to fund an institution that still hasn’t admitted what it did to them.
Belonging: whether people want to stay
Belonging is the outcome the other four aim at. It is also the hardest to fake, because people answer with their feet.
In a development office, the clearest test is staff. In my experience, the people who leave first are often the ones who were asked to carry the most. Picture a gift officer who is the only person of her background on the team and who becomes, without a title or a raise, the one who leads every equity effort, reviews every sensitive appeal, and represents the organization at every community event. She may be present, included, and fairly paid. She may also be updating her résumé.
In practice. Hold stay interviews as well as exit interviews. Once a year, ask each member of the development team: What keeps you here? What would make you leave? What work are you doing that isn’t in your job description? What should we stop asking of you? Then act on what you hear. If someone is carrying unofficial work, either make it official and pay for it or share it out.
Apply the same test to donors and volunteers. If they don’t come back, ask why, and believe the answer.
Why I keep using the words
I’ve heard the case for retiring the vocabulary: keep doing the work, just call it something safer. I understand the impulse. The words draw fire, and small organizations have real reasons to be careful.
Here is where I land. Vague words make vague commitments. “Community” and “welcoming to all” sound lovely and promise nothing you can check. The five DEIJB words are useful because each one points to something you can look at: a roster, a policy, a meeting schedule, a history, a turnover rate. When organizations stop saying them, the first thing to go is the accountability. The work tends to follow.
And the people those words describe are paying attention. I’m a trans woman. I notice which organizations go quiet when it gets hard, and so does everyone else who has had to wonder whether they were welcome. Saying the words out loud, and backing them with practice, is one of the clearest signals of welcome an organization can send.
A one-page check for your development office
Print this. Answer each question in a sentence or two, with names and numbers where you can.
- Diversity. Who helps set our fundraising priorities and build the prospect list? Who is missing, compared to the community we serve?
- Equity. Which of our fundraising rules (board giving, recognition levels, event pricing, portfolio assignments) set a price of entry? Who does each one keep out?
- Inclusion. When, where, and in what languages do our volunteer and donor activities happen? Who can’t take part as they are designed now?
- Justice. What part of our history would the people affected by it want acknowledged? What would repair look like, in their words?
- Belonging. Who on our staff, board, or volunteer corps has left in the past two years, and do we know why? Who is carrying work that isn’t in their job description?
Pick the answer that bothers you most. Fix that one first.
If you’d like an outside eye on all five, our DEIJB Audit and Strategy work starts with exactly these questions.
– Mary-Ellen
Featured photo: Photo by Ashley Byrd on Unsplash.
