A new report seeks to get a better handle on the racial equity efforts happening at nonprofits around the state.
Sharmin Shahjahan is the Racial Equity Collective director at Forefront, an association of 1100 nonprofits and grantmakers in Illinois.
She says the definition of racial equity may differ from region to region, but there is a common thread statewide.
"At the core of it, we are looking to rectify the harm that has been created through different laws and different factors or principles, even within the the philanthropic sector," she said.
She said the collective wants to dig more into the practical implications of how racial equity is defined, and how that informs their work.
Forefront's Racial Equity Access survey found the current political climate and getting support from stakeholders are some of the regional challenges found outside Chicago, in addition to shared factors like a lack of funding, capacity, and data.
Attitudes towards diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the nonprofit sector can be difficult to change, but not impossible, said Shahjahan.
"This work itself a lot of times boils down to more basic than this conceptual racial equity, right? So all of our basic needs are, we want to live in a safe environment, you know, increase the quality of our life."
She said breaking it down that way helps break down barriers among people who may not be immediately on board with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. She said talking to different partners about how they overcame challenges also helps.
"We're looking to build out a cohort where individuals and organizations from across the state can come together and really deeply talk about, you know, how am I approaching the work? How am I defining racial equity, when I'm trying to tell the story to someone who's not even in my sector? what's the language that I use to share the progress that we're making?" she asked.
The Forefront Racial Equity Collective's mapping survey and gap analysis can be found here.
