EQUITY, DIVERSITY, & INCLUSION & ANTI- RACISM

We want you here. We want to get you here. We want you to thrive here.

YNPN Austin is dedicated to ensuring that emerging leaders have the necessary tools and resources to effectively make change in their work in the Austin community. Our vision of empowering young leaders to advance Austin’s nonprofit community can only be achieved by making our network and the sector as a whole more equitable, diverse, and inclusive.

YNPN Austin will move our equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives forward by:

  • Ensuring that all programs and events reflect and include the diversity of Austin’s nonprofit organizations and the people who work in them.
  • Proactively promoting and providing accessible programs for members and potential members of all backgrounds to succeed, along with assessing the potential barriers that prohibit professional and personal growth.
  • Creating and providing intentional spaces for people of diverse backgrounds to network and connect with one another.
  • Using the YNPN Austin platform to highlight our diverse membership, the nonprofit organizations where they work and the communities we support.
  • Engaging in sustainable partnerships that support and enhance YNPN Austin’s mission and commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion.
  • Understanding that EDI initiatives are an ongoing process that takes time, self-reflection along with community discussion, and intentional engagement to the work.

ANTI-RACISM STATEMENT

YNPN Austin believes that Black Lives Matter. The mass actions against police brutality and violence in our Austin community and nationwide are ongoing and a direct result of injustices faced by Black people. We stand in solidarity with our Black and Brown communities and demand justice for Mike Ramos, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, and countless others whose names won’t make the headlines. 

While individual members are in different places on their journey in anti-racism work, YNPN Austin recognizes that our current efforts are not enough to disrupt and eliminate systemic racism in the nonprofit sector. We are committed to creating and supporting a nonprofit workforce that better serves historically underrepresented communities (including Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), and LGBTQIA+ communities).

We want to share with you our past work towards a more equitable YNPN space. In 2019, YNPN Austin established an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) task force to work on moving our organization forward in accessibility for the diversity of experiences in the Austin nonprofit sector. The task force has led to the following actions:

  • An EDI statement that centers our work within our board, programming, and committees
  • An equity lens on Board of Directors recruitment 
  • Event topics focused on equity 
  • Events planning audit, revised our event planning process to increase focus on location accessibility, speaker diversity and using our purchasing power to support local, women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC businesses.
  • Created a survey for YNPN members and non-members to identify barriers to our organization, solicit feedback, and incorporate necessary changes to our work 

 

We realize that this is not enough and our work does not stop there. YNPN Austin will work towards:

  • Increasing YNPN’s capacity to sustainably cultivate equity, diversity, and inclusion by establishing a permanent committee and roles on the YNPN board.
  • Exploring how YNPN Austin can participate in anti-racism work in the nonprofit sector in an impactful way and disseminating resources to our members.
  • Examining how YNPN Austin can advocate for and activate the Black and Brown communities that work in the nonprofit community in Austin by:
    • Fostering conversations with our BIPOC nonprofit community to hear and advocate for their needs.
    • Researching how we can support and work with existing organizations that do the work well. 
  • Creating benchmarks and evaluating YNPN Austin’s effectiveness on our equity, inclusion, and diversity work.

 

At YNPN Austin, we are committed to learning from and working with Black communities to build a social sector where true racial justice exists. We invite our community to join us in reflection and active participation in this work.