Shining a Light: DIY Equity Audits of Our Organizational Strengthening Programs

Organizational strengthening efforts have the potential to enable organizations to achieve better results, but organizational strengthening efforts can also perpetuate inequities within communities. Intentionally designing equitable organizational strengthening efforts means choosing equity at every point (i.e. who defines “capacity”?) in our program life cycle and interrogating our own biases along the way. This session will shine a light on the ways our organizational strengthening programs can reduce inequities or perpetuate them. Through sharing concrete examples from our own programs and the work of seasoned capacity builders we will explore questions, such as how are communities driving our programs? Are we imposing specific ideas about resilience, sustainability, leadership or infrastructure? Who should we be asking about their experience? Who should be asking the questions? How should we ask? By exploring these questions together, we will collaboratively build an equity audit tool that participants can apply to their own work.