Building Equity: Best Practices for Embedding DEI in Nonprofit Programs
- Utsavi Joshi
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
A nonprofit executive recently told us: "We hired a DEI consultant, did the training, updated our mission statement... and nothing actually changed."
Sound familiar?
At CLASS, we’ve partnered with program directors and nonprofit leadership teams seeking to embed equity directly into service delivery and community engagement. And here's what we've learned: the problem is lack of infrastructure. Real equity work is a fundamental redesign of how you operate, who holds power, and whose voices shape your mission.
Read on if you want to know what it really takes to embed DEI in your nonprofit’s work deeply, intentionally, and sustainably. Here are the seven practices that actually move the needle.
1. Start With Community-Led Design
Too often, nonprofits design programs for communities instead of with them.
True equity starts with co-creation. That means involving the communities you serve from Day 1 in planning, decision-making, and leadership roles.
Questions to ask before you begin:
Who shaped this program?
Whose voices were centered?
Who gets to define what “success” looks like?
Example: The Black Feminist Fund uses participatory grantmaking to let Black women shape funding priorities. This is equity in action.
2. Move From ‘Access’ to ‘Belonging’
Access is just the first step. Belonging is the goal. It is about being seen, heard, and valued once you're there.
Here’s what that might look like in programs:
Offering interpretation of all materials.
Designing meeting spaces with cultural respect such as food, language, time, traditions.
Building trauma-informed environments where participants feel emotionally safe.
Insight: Research from the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley defines belonging as having a meaningful voice and the genuine opportunity to help shape the structures that affect your life.
3. Audit Your Data And Also, Your Assumptions
Yes, collect demographic data. But equity work is also about power and perspective.
Following ideas might help:
Conduct a ‘Power Mapping’ exercise of your programs. Who benefits most? Who is unintentionally left out?
Review policies for bias, which is everything from eligibility criteria to disciplinary practices.
Question yourself if your metrics are rewarding outcomes or reinforcing systemic gaps?
Resource: Check out the Equity in the Center’s ‘Awake to Woke to Work’ framework which helps organizations assess internal practices and move toward equity.
Track Metrics That Matter
Data matters but counting heads isn’t equity.
Vanity Metrics (common but shallow):
% of staff who are BIPOC
%DEI Trainings completed
Demographic representation in programs
Meaningful Metrics (drive real change):
Retention & advancement rates by demographic — Who stays and who rises?
Pay equity ratios — Are people paid fairly at similar levels?
Decision-making power — Who controls budgets, hiring, and strategy?
Program reach — Are you serving those furthest from opportunity?
Belonging data — Do staff and participants feel safe, valued, and heard?
4. Compensate Participation — Equity is Economic
One big mistake nonprofits make? Asking community members for “input” without offering compensation.
Time is valuable, expertise is valuable and so is lived experience. So, pay your program participants, community advisors, and lived experience experts just as you would consultants. It is ethical and it improves engagement and outcomes.
5. Training With Context
DEI must be ongoing, localized, and specific to your work. So, just one annual anti-bias training wouldn't suffice.
Include historical context around racial inequity or gender bias in your sector.
Facilitate monthly learning circles that explore identity, language, and unconscious bias.
Bring in community-based facilitators, not just corporate DEI firms.
Tip: When selecting training partners, look beyond generic corporate diversity consultants. Organizations like Race Forward — a national racial justice nonprofit, offer a well-developed suite of training programs grounded in structural racism analysis, including their Building Racial Equity series designed for nonprofits, government agencies, and community organizations. Similarly, the Center for Urban and Racial Equity CURE specializes in training racial equity practitioners, offering programs such as their Understanding Institutional and Structural Racism workshop and multi-day organizational change intensives.
6. Invest in Internal Equity
If your staff doesn’t feel safe, included, or represented, it will show up in your programs.
Do you have BIPOC staff in leadership roles?
Are salaries transparent and equitable?
Are workplace norms accommodating to neurodiverse, disabled, or caregiving staff?
DEI that starts 'on the inside' makes your external programs more authentic and effective.
Building Movement Project’s Race to Lead reports reveal how nonprofit staff, especially people of color experience exclusion and burnout.
7. Reimagine Accountability with the Community
Consider expanding the model to the people you serve.
That could look like:
Publicly sharing program impact and equity gaps.
Hosting annual community town halls with real-time feedback loops.
Creating advisory councils made up of youth, elders, immigrants, or formerly incarcerated individuals — depending on your mission.
Model: The Detroit Justice Center Community Legal Advocate program trains community members to help Detroiters shape the laws that impact them.
Summary
DEI should not be owned by a single person. It should touch everything you do from hiring, programming, funding, evaluation, and culture. And it’s never “done.” Equity work is a continual practice of listening, shifting, and growing. Real equity is something that will transform your purpose, your impact, and your community's trust in you.
We help nonprofits turn these DEI best practices into action: guiding leadership commitments, shaping inclusive policies, creating channels for feedback, and aligning programs with equity.
CLASS has been a trusted advisor to nonprofit board and leadership teams since 2002.
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