Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi Friends,

Our organization, Pawster Nashville, is currently working hard to ensure our leadership (board of directors) is representative of the communities we serve. We spent the last year with a DEI consultant identifying specific strategies for building relationships in currently underrepresented communities, and we are at the stage of inviting board members to join the board. These will be the first board members who are not just "the founder's friends." What do your board onboarding processes look like? Interviews? Selection process? Ensuring equity and inclusion throughout the process and controlling for implicit bias among current board members?

All thoughts would be appreciated!

Gabe Horton
Executive Director
Pawster Nashville

Hi Gabe, 

Our Community Conversations call on 4/24/23 at 11am PT will be all about how to diversify your board! Here are the details and learning outcomes of this call:

In this session, boards will learn how to work to ground organizational values and recruitment practices so that they are inclusive. They will redefine their roles by accepting accountability for setting the tone with deliberate and strategic action to have an increased presence of people of color on boards.

Learning Outcomes:
✓ Understand why board diversity matters
✓ Identify the characteristics of an inclusive-ready Board
✓ Build a pipeline for diverse members
✓ Locate sources to recruit diverse members
✓ Embrace the value of collective networks in board inclusive culture

If you aren't already, you can register for the call here: http://maddies.fund/CommunityConversationsRegistration. We will also record it and share the recording here on Maddie's Pet Forum if you're unavailable to join live or want to share with members of your board.

You can learn more about this specific community conversation here: https://forum.maddiesfund.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=d7e32ae8-345d-424c-b89e-018771ca1393&CommunityKey=afce7f7a-fd5a-431e-9f2a-aaedc46a03d6&Home=%2fevents%2fcalendar

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Charlotte Otero
Community Strategist at Maddie's Fund
she/her
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