Not just window dressing: cultivating lasting policy and practice reforms toward racial equity and justice in a small nonprofit organization.

Abstract

A small community-based justice organization focused on worker and food justice in central Maine has been involved in a years-long process to integrate a racial justice lens following 2020's nation-wide reckoning with white supremacy culture underpinning the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others, as well as the hugely disproportionate health and economic impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color. This empowerment evaluation proposes a process to support small nonprofit organizations in identifying how to explicitly integrate racial justice into established programming by examining organizational identity, goals and values regarding racial justice, and identifying appropriate measures specific to the organization. Once the elements have been identified, staff will have the tools to self-evaluate their activities to hold themselves accountable to the commitment of structural change. The evaluation of this organization's experience illustrates the complexities and practicalities of meaningfully integrating racial justice and equity to organizational policy and culture.