Nonprofits Can Cultivate Communication to Support Diversity

How can nonprofits build diversity awareness into their communication? There are no easy answers. But I find it helps to think of diversity-friendly communication as a tapestry. If you weave diversity awareness into each aspect of your outreach, you’ll see better results than you would if you tacked it on at the end.

That’s the approach my former coworker Dr. Sherrill Sellers recommended when we wrote the CIRTL Diversity Resources. Although the Diversity Resources were written for university instructors, nonprofits can use similar approaches. I recommend checking out our case study collection if you are thinking of organizing facilitated conversations about diversity.

When we were producing the Diversity Resources, we sifted through many university workbooks on creating welcoming climates. We found that a band-aid approach to diversity-friendly communication may be a step in the right direction, but it is just a step. More needs to be done.

After the Be the Media! conference in Boston on Dec. 6, I wrote the following list of questions to help organizations communicate inclusively. Items 1, 2 and 6 are partly based on comments by our facilitators, Elena Letona and Kathleen Pequeño.

1. Whom do you ask for their opinion? If you look at whose voices are absent from your decisions, you may find some gaps. Consider having conversations, surveys and focus groups to include unheard stakeholders. For example, if you are working on an environmental issue in a low-income community, remember to ask for community feedback. This is especially important if there is a language barrier.
2. Are your communication channels working? Make sure not to rely exclusively on the Internet if you want to reach a diverse base of potential supporters. Consider mobile-friendly websites and phone apps. Low-income young people often browse using their phones. Test drive new approaches to see what works.
3. Is your communication jargon-free, easy to understand, and interesting? Remember, your audiences are not required to listen to you, even if you’re communicating vital health information about disease prevention or disaster awareness. Think about the style of language you’re using. If you use research language with non-specialists, your message may be ignored or misinterpreted. Ask your audiences for feedback.
4. Is your message relevant? Why should your audiences care about the issues that matter to your organization? If you get to know them and learn what matters to them, your communication will be much more on target than it would be otherwise.
5. Have you stepped outside your office to visit your audiences lately? How well do you know them? The more you develop  relationships, the better your communication will be.
6. Have you considered partnering with or hiring messengers from underrepresented groups? Try crowdsourcing media, inviting people to tell their own stories via videos or blogs, and asking questions to draw out answers. You can use the results to develop stories for funders, decision makers, and media.
7. Do you ask for constructive criticism? If you only focus on positive stories, you won’t see the roots of problems.
8. Are your events, jobs and internships accessible to people who earn less than a middle-class income? Holding fundraisers with lower ticket prices, reducing reliance on alumni networks for hiring, and paying interns who can’t afford to take unpaid internships are three steps you can take to make your organization more welcoming.

Weaving ideas like these into your communication and outreach can help you develop real relationships with communities rather than being seen as an outside agency. The more you make your communication two-way – listening, respecting community comments, and taking an interest in others – the better your results are likely to be. Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.

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Energy Efficiency Researchers Dig into the Deep South

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), where I worked for two years, is delving into questions which are relevant to Southern states and  working-class communities. I support this approach because it’s essential for environmental nonprofits to take on questions that reach beyond the East and West Coasts and outside the Beltway.

The first report showing that ACEEE was pursuing this course of action was the May 2012 publication Opportunity Knocks: Examining Low-Ranking States in Energy Efficiency. These states are mainly located in the Southeast and the northern Great Plains, where lack of awareness of the benefits of energy efficiency often combines with skepticism and an aversion to top-down mandates.

The theme of avoiding government mandates has emerged in ACEEE’s behavioral research. An article from Real Energy Writers reports that ACEEE Behavior and Human Dimensions Program director Susan Mazur-Stommen has been touring the South. She’s been interviewing people about what energy efficiency means in their lives. Her discoveries so far are intriguing. Many of her interviewees are aware of energy efficiency, but are pursuing it independently and not through structured programs.

“People are pursuing green in the South, but they are doing it in their own way. That is one of the messages. They don’t trust the government. They don’t trust their utility. They worry about scams,” Mazur-Stommen said in her interview with journalist Elisa Wood. Mazur-Stommen said that messaging about energy efficiency in the South needs to be customized for regional viewpoints.

Economic opportunity may be a valuable angle. In August, ACEEE published a fact sheet on Energy Efficiency and Economic Opportunity which addresses the importance of designing energy efficiency programs so that they build stable employment in local communities. As the fact sheet says:

At every step of the economic value chain produced by efficiency investments… there are opportunities to target the economic and social benefits to those households, businesses, geographies, or sectors for whom they will make the biggest difference. The results of these choices can include lower costs for low- and moderate-income families and small businesses; opportunities for disadvantaged, local workers to get jobs with good wages; and new and retained economic activity in disinvested communities.

This is a crucial statement. Given the large number of American communities suffering after the recession, it’s absolutely essential for environmental nonprofits to discuss socioeconomic issues.

Working-class communities sometimes include manufactured homes. Mobilizing Energy Efficiency in the Manufactured Housing Sector, a report which ACEEE published in July, broke new ground by charting the potential energy savings in manufactured homes. 

Manufactured houses waste energy as if their owners had money to spare – which they often do not. Builders of manufactured homes focus on cost and have relatively easygoing code requirements. As a result, these homes have high energy bills.

The report says making manufactured housing more energy-efficient could save 40 percent of the total electricity consumption and 33 percent of the total natural gas consumption of these homes between 2011 and 2030.

Design for whom?

About a month ago, I read about an innovative architectural education program called Rural Studio that has been featured on public radio and has also become the subject of a book. Students working at Rural Studio are building houses in a very low-income part of western Alabama. These houses were designed to be affordable, with a $20,000 mortgage, for people living on incomes of close to $637 a month. (No, there is not a zero missing in that first number.) The houses look distinctive – these are not cookie-cutter buildings – but they are basic, functional homes built with low-cost materials. Rural Studio has also been expanding its scope to create other community buildings, including an animal shelter and a bird-watching tower.

I don’t know how much it would cost to construct these $20,000 houses on a larger scale, but there might be a significant untapped market for houses in that price range in the United States (and probably in other countries too).