When I graduated college three years ago and was forcibly propelled into the “real world” with a diploma in one hand and a resumé in the other, I didn’t have much of a clue about where I wanted to go next. I did know one thing — I wanted to help people. Not in a medical capacity, which (much to my mother’s dismay) I luckily concluded before I got to college, but in a space where I could strengthen communities through storytelling. With that figured out, I set out to find my niche in a place that, at the time, seemed best suited to me and my ambition to make the world a little less crappy: the nonprofit sector.
Over the past couple years, I’ve bounced around from various nonprofit organizations in contract positions desperately trying to find my beat. I worked in administration at a mental health institute, with the membership team at an art gallery, as an assistant at a kids’ rehab hospital, and as an intern at a cultural media organization. As I sampled the nonprofit platter and the range of roles it had to offer, I began to notice that one thing remained consistent: the faces of my colleagues. More specifically, I noticed how racially homogeneous the nonprofit workforce is.
This didn’t come as a surprise, but I admit it was still sobering to shuffle around an office during a tour on my first day at the job and shake the hands of people who were almost all cis-hetero, able-bodied, and white. Still, I smiled, signed whatever I needed to from Human Resources, and stated how excited I was to be there and jump on board. I thought: As long as I do my job well and contribute to the cause, the backgrounds of my colleagues doesn’t matter, right?
One of the more recent pop culture takes on the experience of being a person of color in mostly white nonprofits is on the hit HBO comedy-drama Insecure. The show’s protagonist Issa Dee is played by Issa Rae, who works as the Youth Liaison at a Los Angeles nonprofit awkwardly dubbed We Got Y’all. I say awkwardly because the organization, which aims to mentor children through education programming, targets a Black American and Latinx demographic. Meanwhile, the faces behind We Got Y’all are decidedly those of middle-class, white suburbanites. As Issa Dee remarks in the show, her boss founded the organization to help children “from the hood” but didn’t actually hire anyone “from the hood.” As a result, Issa, who is the only Black employee, is reduced to being a clumsy gateway into what We Got Y’all is desperately trying to achieve. The show is an echo of Issa Rae’s own lived experiences.
After running through season one of Insecure in a single sitting, it dawned on me that I’ve been Issa before. Many times, in fact. The frustration and pressure she felt being in a space that consistently reminded her that she was a Black woman was palpable. Luckily, I haven’t had the unfortunate experience of being reduced to a walking thesaurus for my colleagues before (“Issa, what’s ‘on fleek’?”) but I do know what it feels like to be undervalued.
As I began to come to terms with the reality of the nonprofit landscape and how hostile it can be, both overtly and covertly, my job searching habits began to change. When I scoured the internet for new jobs, I couldn’t help but immediately visit the “Meet the Team” pages of nonprofits I was interested in. As I scrolled through the staff lists, I was usually met with disappointment as it became apparent that I would be one of very few people of color there, let alone Black (and Muslim) people. Although the job descriptions reeled me in, getting lost in thought about what a typical day at the office would be like as the only Black woman like Issa exhausted me. As someone grappling with student loans and the ever-growing cost of living in a major city, could I really afford to be exhausted? I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and in the end, I usually found myself clicking “Apply” anyway.
There’s an ongoing conversation about the lack of diversity in workplaces, but it’s primarily limited to the for-profit world in industries such as journalism, academia, and technology. The for-profit world is perceived as more corrupt, more morally bankrupt, and more problem-riddled than the nonprofit world. Meanwhile, nonprofits are given somewhat of a pass because they “do good” in the form of the mission-driven like saving the environment, raising money for a cure, or educating children from neighborhoods with low resources. This allows nonprofits to escape examination under the same critical eye that for-profits are. For that to change, we need to accept the both the for-profit and the nonprofit industries are susceptible to perpetuating human biases and systemic injustices.
It’s no secret that nonprofit leadership is overwhelmingly comprised of privileged white people. A recent report revealed that white people have a stronghold in nonprofit leadership positions in the United States, occupying about 90% of board seats and CEO posts with a quarter of all boards being completely white. If you’ve ever worked in a nonprofit, you probably know that this is pretty run-of-the-mill.
There’s no easy overnight fix to this disparity, but over the years one thing has become clear to me: nonprofit organizations need to actively hire people in leadership and programming positions to reflect the communities they’re trying to serve. Copying and pasting a little clause at the end of job postings that encourages people in marginalized communities to apply is doing the bare minimum and frankly, is becoming a lazy alternative to real work.
If an organization focuses on making the world a more accessible place for disabled people, there should be disabled people on staff to lead, design, advocate, and propel the organization forward. If an organization focuses on meeting the legal needs of immigrants, people with the lived experience of immigration should be invited into the board room to be part of the conversation. Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk and building partnerships with the communities you say you care about is entirely another.
I’m no expert, but there are a few obvious ways nonprofits can shift the culture of exclusive hiring, including posting jobs in more accessible boards and areas where marginalized communities frequent. Although the catch-all job boards are easy, promoting the job in places like community centers can garner a more varied pool of candidates. Depending on the organization, another possible method is creating job training programs to empower individuals with job-ready skills so that they can then be hired as full-time staff in the organization.
Abolishing the plague of unpaid internships in the nonprofit world is also crucial so that young people who lack the financial resources (i.e well-off parents) to work for free aren’t barred from getting their foot in the door. Finding a way to regulate the selection of board members so that it isn’t dependent on the biased recommendations of outgoing members can also help make boards more inclusive.
Don’t get me wrong — diversity alone isn’t the magic antidote to fixing social institutions, including some nonprofits, that haven’t budged for generations and exist primarily to exert power and control. That mode of thinking just leads to parading faces around for show-and-tell and keeping opportunistic people on top. But letting people lead and help transform their own communities is a step in the right direction. I love working directly with communities and towards a mission I feel strongly about, but the combination of tokenism, alienation, and a lack of value placed on my insights and career goals often makes me wonder whether or not it’s worth it. If being pushed into the for-profit world means I’ll experience the same exact thing, at least I’d be getting paid more for my labor, right?
If you seek a career in the nonprofit sector, there are plenty of worthwhile and rewarding aspects of it to look forward to. In retrospect, I wouldn’t trade the relationships I have made and the measurable impact I’ve had in the organizations I’ve worked in so far. However, dig a little deeper when you’re looking for your next job and make it a habit to check if the organization’s values actually align with their actions and are reflected in the makeup of their people. If not, you may want to save yourself the trouble of surviving in an underpaid role in a mostly white space and move on.
