How To Build an Equitable Communications Practice

By Lena Kazer, Zach Carter, Claire Shipton, and Elyse Dickson

In the past year, we’ve all seen foundations, organizations, and companies make public commitments to racial equity and to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. But internal change takes more than good intentions. Posting a public statement is very different from dedicating resources toward structural change, and the public is taking note.

To avoid blunders of performatism and tokenization that lack clear steps toward measurable change, those genuinely investing in equity-driven strategies across departments need to ensure that equity as a value is also built into their communications plans and content strategies.

Many of our clients have asked us: how do we build the foundation for an ongoing equitable communications practice?

At RALLY, we’ve spent the last several months researching just that — how to define equitable communications, and better understand how our clients can integrate those principles into their everyday communications practices in a sustainable and strategic way. In our research and interviews with leadership across national foundations and organizations, we identified four key features of equitable communications: asset-framing, accessibility, democratizing voices, and centering racism.

Below we’ve created a series of graphics to highlight how we define each feature, offering a definition we’ve built internally based on our research, a few guiding questions to help you evaluate your approach, and examples of that key feature in practice. We hope you find this table helpful for thinking through ways to improve your equitable communications, but remember: equity isn’t a strategy, framework, or theme — it’s a value. These key features are not exhaustive, they’re just a starting point.

Asset-framing

Definition

Asset-framing requires centering the strengths, agency, power, and resilience of oppressed people, and emphasizing that the primary drivers of inequity are systemic.

Deficit language is extremely embedded in the way industries like philanthropy have traditionally addressed the communities and individuals they aim to serve.

Questions to Consider

• Who’s experience are you centering? Who is the “hero” of the story?
• Does content highlight the strengths and ambitions of the individuals before defining the realities and challenges they’re faced with?

In Practice

• Avoid language that dehumanizes populations, such as “the homeless” or “the poor.” Refer to people as people, for example, “people without housing” and emphasize the problematic systems that put those people in those positions.

Accessibility

Definition

Language changes over time and inequity will find new forms, so organizations with truly equitable communications practices must always be listening, evaluating, and iterating on the language, strategies, and platforms they use to reach their audiences.

Accessibility isn’t just about formatting text or adding subtitles. It’s about consistently working to understand your audiences and their needs, and find creative ways to meet them where they are.

Questions to Consider

• Is the content formatted, created, and customized for the platform and audience it is being shared on/with?
• Is the content accessible to people with disabilities or impairments?

In Practice

• Use language that’s accessible to folks outside of the space and avoid using jargon.
• Consider the digestibility of the content form itself. If you have a 10-minute webinar recording, can you break it up into bite-sized highlights? Can the clips live on Instagram Reels or Facebook as well as the website?

Democratizing Voices

Definition

Actualizing equitable communications day to day means passing the microphone, often. Building the infrastructure for consistent collaboration is critical for a sustainable long-term practice, and important for ensuring that thought partners never feel tokenized.

There ideally needs to be representation in leadership and across departments to ensure that the power isn’t concentrated between a homogenous group of individuals.

Questions to Consider

• Are your communications materials representative of the audiences you aim to reach?
• Are you referencing the work, idea, story, or experience of another person or community that could provide that perspective directly?

In Practice

• Lend platforms to a diverse coalition of voices to share their perspectives in their own words.
• Be careful not to tokenize community voices. Platform sharing should be done on an ongoing, not one-off basis.

Centering Racism

Definition

Centering racism as the key driver of inequity is critical to an equitable communications practice. It’s important to make the distinction that equity requires changing systems and structures, not individuals.

Questions to Consider

• Does your content center systems-impacted people? Would the content reach them effectively on channels that they engage in?
• Does your content discuss what you are doing to advance racial justice and equity, not just describing “the problem”?

In Practice

• Rather than circumventing “tough conversations” about race, directly link equitable communications to structural and institutional racism.
• Don’t be shy about naming how your organization’s mission is inextricably linked to the need to address systemic racism.

There’s a reason we refer to equitable communications as a practice. Like language, it evolves. Building your practice over time will require ongoing self-reflection, evaluation, feedback, and more than likely, building capacity for elevating new voices. Centering the features of equitable communications during the creation of written materials, protocols, and strategies ensures that equity is not an afterthought — but rather — an intentional value built into your communications from the get-go. Transforming and disrupting systems to improve equity requires commitment and accountability, but we’re all responsible for working towards that change.

RALLY is an issue-driven communications firm | Certified force for good by B Corporation

Our team consists of experts in political, media, and digital strategy. Get inside our brain: click here to sign up for our official newsletter. Learn more at wearerally.com.