The Association Blog

Is the demographic makeup of your community reflected in your staff?

In their recent webinar, Aligning DEI Programming with Strategy, Tom Hayashi, MS Ed, PhD, of The Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership, and Marin Humane’s Nancy McKenney, MNPL, CAWA, reminded us of the all-important DEI assessment.

“At Marin Humane, we started with the demographic data,” says Hayashi, who consulted with McKenney on Marin’s DEI goals. “We looked at the demographics external to the organization—in other words, the community that they actually operate in—as well as the internal demographics of its workforce.”

Hayashi and McKenney then compared the race and ethnic background of Marin’s workforce versus the race and ethnic background of the outside community. They used this information to create an objective for Marin Humane—and this is one they suggest to try as part an overall DEI strategy.

“One of the ways in which you might want to create an objective is to consider how close you can get to what the demographic is for a particular segment of the community,” says Hayashi.

For example, 16.4 percent of Marin County, the community that Marin Humane serves, is Hispanic, and Hispanic representation in Marin Humane’s workforce is 11 percent. In this example, a measurable goal would focus on a closer match of the two percentages.

For more tips from Hayashi and McKenney, listen to the recorded webinar.

If you’d like to better reflect the demographics of your community in your leadership, workforce and programming, what might that goal look like?

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Photo: Stuart Miles