Our Anti-Racism Pledge

To be anti-racist is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably. EdFuel is committed to actively listening and learning while working towards dismantling systemic racism and calling out racial inequities.

At EdFuel, we believe that talent work is equity work. Organizations must be diverse, equitable, and inclusive if they are going to recruit and retain their teachers and leaders. In order to achieve this goal organizations must first develop policies, practices, and behaviors to dismantle racism.

In 2020, EdFuel formally adopted the organizational goal and priority to be explicitly anti-racist. EdFuel has always strived to model inclusive behavior and equitable practices; however, we realize the need to formalize, codify, and review our existing internal and external policies, practices, and operations. This organizational statement is the foundational artifact that will guide EdFuel’s work to evolve into an explicitly anti-racist organization. An internal working group has been tasked with evaluating EdFuel’s current state and generating recommendations for more specific actions to continue to move our organization forward.

This will be a multi-year undertaking and ongoing evolution. While engaging in this work we commit to the following:

• Creating an anti-racist environment, enforced through inclusive organizational culture, policies, and priorities.
• Setting annual organizational goals focused on increasing diversity and inclusion, and living out EdFuel’s mission.
• Hiring and retaining diverse staff at all levels of the organization, individualized coaching, and development support for each staff member, detailed scorecards, and partner reviews at all points in the hiring process.
• Establishing and consistently reevaluating finance, compliance and HR policies, including conducting scheduled compensation equity audits and calibration, and offering unlimited sick and mental health days for all staff.
• Regularly setting aside time for the team to discuss questions, learnings and challenges related to race and equity, e.g. continuing weekly team-wide equity and inclusion stepbacks, modeling and encouraging direct and open discussion on internal, external, or public topics related to race and equity.

• Holding up a mirror to individual and organizational inequities and racism by utilizing anti-racist lens to determine potential blind spots in thinking and/or action.
• Supporting leaders to understand organizational blind spots through intentional coaching.
• Asking partners difficult questions that go beyond the surface level to ensure a holistic understanding of the impact of talent practices on staff members, particularly along lines of race, gender, and other categories of employee identity.
• Analyzing the impact of current talent practices, individual and organizational, on staff members, specifically through the lens of race, gender, and other categories of employee identity.
• Articulating specific engagement outcomes to improve the level of diversity, equity, and/or inclusion within the organization.

This is not a comprehensive list; however, it is important to acknowledge some of our foundational beliefs that will be at the core of our actions to become an anti-racist organization and encourage our partners to do the same. You can find our original organizational statement regarding the Black Lives Matter movement here.

• We believe that all children deserve the dignity of an equitable education. In the US, a child’s zip code is currently one of the strongest predictors of their quality of education and their life outcomes. These disparities are grounded in and reinforced by racist education, health, environmental, housing, and economic policies.
• We believe that the school-to-prison pipeline disproportionately affects students of color. Over policing of Black bodies begins in Pre-K, wherein Black students are suspended at 3x the rate of white students.
• We believe that non-profit organizations created for the purpose of charity have an important role to play in democratizing information. We must question every opportunity for access to data, spaces and resources through the eyes and position of Black people.
• We are a country founded on principles of systemic racism. Centuries of oppression against Black people have created massive generational trauma that not only has never been recognized systematically but also has been continually perpetuated in the form of discrimination in every type of social service. We all must interrogate the ways in which we utilize our privilege and power, both individually and organizationally, to fight for change.