Racial Equity Resources & Referrals

Our skilled team members work with individuals, organizations, networks, and communities committed to collaborative, transformational, and long-term change for racial equity and social justice. We have worked with foundations, government agencies, and nonprofits of all sizes across the nation. We are fully steeped in the practices of collaborative and equitable leadership and bring our unique facilitation magic as we design and support change processes and workshops, grounded in our values of love, power, and networks. When you work with us, you can look forward to powerful learning and a joyful and inspirational experience that is highly interactive, engaging both hearts and minds.

Looking for trusted resources or other partners in this work? You’ll find them below!

Resources and Tools

IISC’s offering: A selection of resource for the field

Awake to Woke to Work®: Building a Race Equity Culture
Useful resource for organizations

Courageous Conversations About Race Protocol
Developed by Glenn Singleton. They provide training, coaching and consulting services for racial equity leaders around the world.

FACTUALITY: Transforming Perspectives through Experiential Learning
“As a premier provider of experiential eduction, the Factuality experience offers immersive data-driven programs desinged to cultivate critical thinking and deep reflection.”

Government Alliance for Race & Equity (GARE)
Public sector organization-focused. Robust set of planning and learning tools and practical materials.

Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens
Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity

PolicyLink
“Through the approach of ‘Lifting Up What Works,’ our programmatic initiatives are organized within three interlocking, mutually reinforcing areas of work. Through these initiatives, we advance policies that enable everyone to participate in an equitable economy, live in a community of opportunity, and thrive in a just society.”

Race Equity and Inclusion Action Guide
Embracing Equity: 7 Steps to Advance and Embed Race Equity and Inclusion Within Your Organization

RacialEquityTools.org
Racialequitytools.org has more than 2500 tools to learn, plan, and train.

Consulting/Training Organizations

Note: There are many, many others who do this work, as well. This list is not intended to be exhaustive or to reflect recommendations by IISC for one resource over another. Where possible, we pulled general descriptions from these websites; however, in some cases, a succinct statement was not easily available.

Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance (AORTA)
“AORTA is a worker-owned cooperative devoted to strengthening movements for social justice and a solidarity economy. We work as consultants and facilitators to expand the capacity of cooperative, collective, and community based projects through education, training, and planning.”

Building Movement Project
“The Building Movement Project (BMP) supports and pushes the nonprofit sector to tackle the most significant social issues of our times by developing research, creating tools and training materials, providing guidance, and facilitating networks for social change. If your organization seeks more customized, hands-on support, Building Movement Project conducts keynotes, workshops, presentations, and also offers consulting services for nonprofit organizations.”

Center to Support Immigrant Organizing (CSIO)
Focused on supporting immigrant organizers, leaders, directors, activists and their organizations to overcome barriers to achieving social, political and economic justice for immigrant communities.

Change Elemental
“In partnership with leaders, organizations, networks, and funders, we explore what is needed to spark transformative, equitable change. Together, we work to overcome habits and practices that hold us back and we craft creative, nimble, and authentic strategies for change. We ground our engagements in our values and the essential elements of deep change.”

Circle Forward
Circle Forward is a system for collaborative governance.  Its methods and tools enable networks and organizations to design their own inclusive and equitable governance systems around the principle of Consent.

ClassMatters 
Cross-class organizing and has some popular ed type materials.

Community Wealth Partners
CWP works with both nonprofits and grantmakers to “turn bold visions into goals, goals into plans, and plans into actions to address some of today’s most pressing challenges.” Services include strategic planning, capacity building, and coaching.

CompassPoint
“CompassPoint helps leaders, nonprofit organizations, and movements
committed to social justice realize their full power. We connect leaders with essential skills and knowledge, cultivate powerful learning communities, and create time and space for people to explore the emotional dimensions of leadership so that we can shift ourselves, our organizations, and our world toward greater justice and equity.” 

Crossroads Anti-Racism
“Training and education are powerful tools for organizing to dismantle racism. Depending on your institution’s organizing outcomes and goals, Crossroads organizers will work with your institutional leaders to determine the best steps for moving forward. This may include providing keynote presentations, consultations, leading retreats or facilitating one of our many anti racism workshops.”

Disruptive Equity Education Project (DEEP)
The Disruptive Equity Education Project (DEEP) is a professional development and strategy organization that is focused on the intentional, developmental, and complex work that is associated with changing mindsets around equity and dismantling systemic oppression and racism. DEEP offers strategic long-term partnerships for individuals, teams and organizations seeking personal, professional and culture changes related to diversity, belonging, inclusion and equity.

Equity In The Center
Offerings include So You Want to Hire an Equity Consultant: A Guide for Leaders and Organizations and monthly open enrollment workshops on the “Awake to Woke to Work®: Building a Race Equity Culture™” research (individuals and organizational teams of up to 49 staff can participate).

Frontline Solutions
“Our team helps organizations working on the front lines of change to define goals, execute plans, and evaluate impact. We are a Black-owned consulting firm that serves the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. We work with our clients to achieve their wildest dreams. We also build tools, models, and ventures that create far-reaching impact.”

Higher Ground Change Strategies
Higher Ground’s comprehensive approach helps partners integrate authentic engagement, systems analysis, framing and narrative strategy, resource development and more for powerful, vision-based change. Higher Ground Change Strategies include change communications, strategic planning, convening design and facilitation for organizations, agencies and philanthropic institutions working to advance social justice. 

Ibis Consulting Group
“IBIS Consulting Group is a Diversity & Inclusion industry leader, offering customized, results-oriented global D&I consulting and training services to organizations across all sectors. Whether we’re delivering unconscious bias training to a Fortune 100 company or helping a Higher-Ed institution develop their D&I strategic plan, we meet our clients where they are on their diversity journeys, adapting our approaches and solutions to their goals, needs, and cultural norms.”

Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
They believe that quality trainings on topics related to race, racism, and anti-racism is one important aspect—along with systemic change—of creating anti-racist societies, organizations, and individuals.

Liberatory Power Consulting Group
The Liberatory Consulting Group is an intentionally multiracial group of Black feminist and antiracist learners and guides who are committed to liberatory power and embodiment of antiracist culture. Their offerings can be found detailed here.

The Management Center
The Management Center offers managers some specific trainings with a racial equity focus.

The Mediation Group
The Mediation Group is one-stop shopping for conflict resolution and organizational development. With 30-plus years of experience, the multi-disciplinary team provides individuals and organizations with support to move forward constructively and with improved functionality. Services include: facilitation, mediation, training and coaching, leadership development, cultural competency, independent workplace investigations, stakeholder assessments, public engagement and process design.

MP Associates
MP Associates works with organizations to align their value of racial equity with their policies, practices and culture, through training, technical assistance, coaching, and mediation. They do not offer one-off trainings, but do offer equity coaching and white caucus facilitation, as well as facilitation of racial equity organizational change processes, including providing technical assistance on specific tasks of an implementation plan (excluding human resources).

The National Equity Project
“We support leaders to transform their systems into equitable, resilient, and liberating environments. We provide consulting and coaching to help leaders and teams make informed decisions and take more effective action. We design and facilitate professional learning experiences for educators and other leaders to reimagine and redesign their systems for equity. Our services build culture, conditions, and competencies for excellence and equity in districts,  organizations, foundations, and communities.”

The Opportunity Agenda
“The Opportunity Agenda is a social justice communication lab that works to advance the impact of the social justice community. We do this by:
– Shaping compelling narratives and messages
– Building the communication capacity of leaders through training and resources
– Engaging with artists, creatives, and culture makers as powerful storytellers to shift the public discourse”

Open Source Leadership
“OpenSource Leadership Strategies, Inc. addresses the leadership and organization development needs of nonprofits and other social change agents across the nation and globe who want to be the change they seek in the world. OpenSource works with Client Partners to align mission-driven outcomes (i.e., what you want to accomplish) with strategy, structure, and culture (i.e., how you accomplish it) for greater impact and integrity.”

Partners for Collaborative Change
PFCC works with organizations to become more equitable through a two-fold approach: democratizing research, planning and design, and anti-oppression facilitation and coaching

The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond
“The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) focuses on understanding what racism is, where it comes from, how it functions, why it persists and how it can be undone. Our Undoing Racism workshops utilize a systemic approach that emphasizes learning from history, developing leadership, maintaining accountability to communities, creating networks, undoing internalized racial oppression and understanding the role of organizational gate keeping as a mechanism for perpetuating racism.”

The Perception Institute
“We offer tailored services related to reducing discrimination and harmful practices including needs assessments, affinity spaces, connection circles, Mind Science workshops, research and evaluation, and communications strategies.”

Praxis Project
“The Praxis Project is a national movement support intermediary committed to capacity building for social change. Our emphasis is on developing fields of work in ways that encourage multi-level, trans-disciplinary learning and collaboration across issues, across the country, and across the globe.”

ProInspire
“We design and deliver programs and resources to help social sector leaders build the competencies, confidence, and connections to accelerate equity and leadership.”

Race Forward
Race Forward’s Building Racial Equity series is a collection of interactive trainings for those who wish to sharpen their skills and strategies to address structural racism and advance racial equity. Unlike “diversity trainings” which primarily focus on interpersonal relations and understanding, the Building Racial Equity trainings emphasize how to challenge and change institutional racial inequities.

Race Matters Institute
“Our customized training, technical assistance, coaching, and product development advance concrete actions in both operations and programming that strengthen an organization’s mission performance. We focus specifically on promoting racial equity in organizational strategies, policies, and practices as a complement to the work of others who focus on racial equity at the individual and interpersonal levels.”

Racial Equity Institute
The 18-month to two-year process is designed to help leaders and organizations who want to proactively understand and address racism, both in their organization and in the community where the organization is working. Can start with short-form and one or more days of training.

Trinity Connects
“Our mission is to unlock opportunities and change the odds for youth of color in Boston. Our goal is to help them succeed by increasing available resources that lower systemic barriers to their achievement and wellbeing. This is vital and unique work for youth of color who are subject to the pervasive trauma of systemic racism.”

Visions, Inc.
“Our multicultural organizational development process incorporates a variety of approaches and techniques that address what people think, what they do, and how they feel about cultural differences and changes. Training is most often a component of organizational development.”

YW Boston
YW Boston helps individuals and organizations change policies, practices, attitudes, and behaviors with the goal of creating more inclusive environments where women, people of color, and especially women of color can succeed.