EdFuel’s Anti-Racist Pledge: An Update

Update on Our Commitment as Education Support Partners

Over the past few months, EdFuel has made strides to live out commitments to ourselves, our team, and our partners as outlined in our Anti-Racist Pledge. Each day as we navigate our work relative to the ever-changing landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are actively working to keep our goal to be a more anti-racist organization top of mind. Today we will share some of the actions that have been taken related to the commitments outlined in our pledge. 

Updates on Internal Commitments to our Team

Commitment 1: Creating an anti-racist environment, enforced through inclusive organizational culture, policies, and priorities

  • Culture and Climate Survey Creation and Administration: As mentioned in the previous update, EdFuel administered a staff engagement and experience survey. Two of our team members led the initiative to compile the survey, with input from the entire team, not just leadership.
  • Debriefing Results and Taking Action: The whole team and affinity groups were organized to debrief the survey results creating space for all team members to reflect and support the development and prioritization of next steps.  The survey designers on the team are synthesizing key takeaways from the debrief conversations and generating a list of recommended actions

Commitment 2: 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

  • Application of an Anti-racism Toolkit: EdFuel will leverage an anti-racism toolkit as a roadmap and accountability system for the portion of our anti-racism evolution that will span 2022.  We are currently exploring Standford’s IDEAL Engage Anti-Racism Toolkit and will adapt it to work for our team.  The toolkit will help to guide ongoing skill-building and open dialogue about operating as an inclusive organization and implementing strategies to advance racial justice through our work. Are there other toolkits you or your team has leveraged? If so, share them with us here.
  • EdFuel has always prioritized discussing questions, learnings, and challenges related to race and equity on a regular basis. We achieve this by setting aside 10-15 minutes for a team member to facilitate a conversation that pushes our team to explore additional approaches to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) strategies. 

Updates on External Commitments to our Partners

Commitment 3: Holding up a mirror to individual and organizational inequities and racism by utilizing an anti-racist lens to determine potential blind spots in thinking and action 

  • EdFuel recently published an Organizational Policy Toolkit, a new resource for organizational and talent leaders in the education sector. Within the toolkit, we’ve included our new policy review rubric to evaluate current organizational policies, including through the lens of promoting DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) and anti-racism. The toolkit is designed such that individuals and organizations can access ready-to-implement resources that support uncovering potential blind spots related to inequities and racism.

It is important to EdFuel that we share our progress with our network and remain open to ongoing feedback from members of our community. To this end, we will continue to document our learnings and journey to becoming an explicitly anti-racist organization via our Talent Talks Blog.