LGBT Inclusivity Toolkit 2016

LGBT INCLUSIVITY TASK FORCE Once your board reaches a consensus to become LGBT inclusive, we recommend you form an LGBT Inclusivity Task Force. The goal of the task force is to develop and recommend to the board any and all changes needed to current Village policies & procedures, education & training, and marketing & communications to make the Village more inclusive of LGBT older adults.

Ideally the task force should consist of a mix of Village members, board members, volunteers, and staff as well as 1-2 members from the LGBT community at large. Included among the staff and volunteers who serve on the task force should be those responsible for overseeing Village operations; educating & training volunteers and/or staff; and designing/maintaining the Village website, social media, print materials and other marketing and communications collateral. After the team has been assembled, its members should elect a chair to direct their work.

While as a whole we recommend the task force meet once a month, the vast majority of its work should be done between meetings. This will allow the task force to use the monthly meetings as intended: for reviewing work, making decisions and developing final recommendations for presentation to the Village board. Be aware that for planning purposes, our experience indicates the tasks to be performed between meetings will take 4-6 hours per month to complete.

We also discovered that using modern work tools such as webinar hosting, video conferencing and a cloud-based document sharing platform will greatly enhance your productivity and work efficiency.

Many, such as Google Drive (https://www.google.com/drive) and Skype (https://www.skype.com/en) are free. Use of these tools, however, is not necessary for the task force to complete its work. “Old fashioned� pen and paper will work just fine.