As we prepare for the April workshop From Self to Systems: Leadership for Collective Impact, we’ll be sharing materials and readings that will focus on the various aspects related to leading within collective impact.

Now in our fourth and last week of pre-reads, we’re sharing a few resources, curated by workshop faculty, that can help boost your capacity as well as provide a way to discuss these topics with workshop attendees and CI Forum members.

Racial Equity Pre-Reads

Viewing collective impact work with an equity lens, especially racial equity, is a crucial and necessary step towards achieving population-level change through collective impact. Building in a “bias” towards equity can help deepen engagement, strengthen relationships, ease communications, and increase the effectiveness of your data-gathering and evaluations. Most important, having a deeper understanding of the inequity surrounding the social issue you are trying to change can help you better understand and work with the communities most affected. Below are a couple resources that can help explore how to bring an equity lens into your work.

Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity - In this Foundation Review article, Gita Gulati-Parteein discusses that examining privilege and culture are necessary steps to take to work towards equity. .

Hungry for more?

White Supremacy Culture – This is a helpful list that discusses the different ways that white privilege can appear in organizations as well as shares some recommendations on how to increase inclusion.

What do you think?

What resonated with you from these resources?

At times, having honest conversations that dive deep into racial equity can be difficult on all sides. What have you found as helpful when having these discussions? What tools or techniques woud you recommend to others who are wondering how to start bringing a racial equity lens to their work?