RACIAL EQUITY
“The SouthCoast Community Foundation has an opportunity to make a forceful case for racial equity by explaining the challenges, highlighting the areas of opportunity, and taking bold action to embed racial equity MARIA A. ROSARIO, BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND into our organization, our work, into RACIAL EQUITY WORKING GROUP MEMBER our community’s fabric, and more importantly, into our personal growth. Only by actively renewing the social contract, starting with a race-conscious approach at the Foundation, can we begin to address the impact of rising inequality and damaging social disparities and help our communities heal.” Last year we made two significant steps in our journey to become an anti-racist organization and embrace the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. First, we launched the Leadership Equity Fund to award grants to nonprofit organizations working to end racism and run by leaders who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and to support the professional development and advancement of nonprofit employees who identify as BIPOC.
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SouthCoast Community Foundation
Second, we worked both internally and with an outside consultant, Strategy Matters, to begin to understsand how racial inequities and inequality impact all of our lives and to start to make change in the way we do business so that we put racial equity specifically, and diversity, equity and inclusion, more broadly at the center of all that we do. This is work that continued throughout all of 2021 and we still have much to do. We are committed to this effort and look forward to updating you on our progress in the future.
