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As we look toward 2025, prioritizing equity in strategic planning won’t be just a “nice-to-have” — it will be essential. The time is now to address structural inequities within your organization to build sustainable growth and maximize your impact.
For an equity-driven strategy to succeed, organizational leadership must be able to drive it forward. This starts with integrating equity into your plan to align with the growing and persistent call for social responsibility. This approach will ensure that your organization leads with integrity, resilience, and authenticity.
Here’s how to further prioritize equity in your strategic planning for the upcoming year.
Set a Clear Vision for Equity in Strategic Planning
Start by clarifying what equity means for your organization and establishing an equity-centered vision. Your leadership must define equity to reflect and directly connect to your mission and values. This shared understanding will be the foundation upon which you build specific, measurable, and actionable goals.
Be sure to engage a diverse team when drafting your equity-centered vision. Including perspectives from every level of leadership and inviting input from the communities you serve can help you identify hidden barriers, strengthen your commitment to change-making, and ensure that the vision you’re crafting is grounded in real experiences and needs.
Remember, shared ownership and collective buy-in are critical to ensuring that your strategic plan clearly outlines a pathway to meaningful change.
Conduct an Equity Audit
This work will require you to think deeply and to be willing to set down existing structures, policies, and practices to improve outcomes. Your leadership team will have to look honestly at your current policies and culture through an equity lens, ultimately an equity audit.
An equity audit or assessment can help identify organizational gaps and biases and where your organization has thrived in grounding your work in equity and belonging. To get started with your audit, you might consider questions like:
Do we create a brave space for our leadership and team to bring forward diverse perspectives?
Are our resources and opportunities equitably distributed?
Are marginalized voices included, amplified, and valued in decision-making?
The audit may highlight gaps but will help you to define specific metrics to measure progress. For example, you might track improvements in community-centric fundraising or evaluate the impact of equity-driven program changes in the communities you serve. These metrics will serve as benchmarks to return to overtime.
Embed Equity into Your Goals and Objectives
Rather than creating separate “equity goals,” your primary task will be integrating equity across all your strategic objectives. For instance, if your organization aims to expand community engagement, consider how you’ll do so equitably. Which communities will you prioritize? How will you ensure that all voices are represented? This approach means considering equity in every goal, from program development to fundraising. This might look like:
Developing programs that are informed by cultural context and lived experiences of the community you’re working alongside.
Adopting equitable fundraising practices by diversifying donor outreach and acknowledging the power dynamics within traditional donor-recipient relationships.
Actively working to remove barriers to internal advancement for employees from underrepresented groups.
When equity becomes an intrinsic part of your organization’s core objectives, it drives transformative action, and, most importantly, it’s reflected in the outcomes and impact of your work.
Measure and Communicate Progress
Transparency and accountability are essential to any equity initiative. Tracking progress and sharing updates with staff, stakeholders, and the communities you work with will foster trust and invite valuable feedback, helping you to refine your strategy.
It’s essential to regularly evaluate key equity metrics and assess whether your efforts create the desired impact. For example, if you are committed to diversifying your board, track changes in board demographics and evaluate the contributions and perspectives these new members bring.
Don’t be afraid of monitoring and evaluation. Data-informed strategies and programs are more likely to succeed and have a long-term impact. In fact, a recent McKinsey study found that data-driven companies outperform their competitors by up to 20 percent.
Adapt and Stay Flexible
Prioritizing equity is a continuous journey. If you want your organization to be prepared to respond to new insights, challenges, and opportunities, you’ll need to embrace flexibility and an openness to learning. By fostering a culture of ongoing learning and adaptation, Your organization will remain committed to equity even as goals and circumstances evolve simply by promoting a culture of agility or ongoing adaptation. Your mission and values should remain steadfast while your strategy and tactics adjust to the circumstances you face as needed and with data-informed reasoning.
As you plan for 2025, remember that achieving true equity requires patience, dedication, and action. Don't forget that your organization is building an inclusive and sustainable foundation to empower your community to thrive.
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