DEI in
Illegal Rubbish
Topic: lack of diversity, equity, & inclusion at a community cleanup nonprofit
in collaboration with Josué Barajas, Anusha Prabhakar, and Gaysha Smith
Executive Summary
Our group of doctoral students, QB Consultancy, partnered with a nonprofit to collaboratively address a lack of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) especially with the recruitment of board members and volunteers from the neighborhoods that they work. The comprehensive report of our work for this effort is available for download.
For the purposes of anonymization, the nonprofit will be referred to by the pseudonym of Tidy Communities (TC) and the location generalized to the Northeastern United States. Further, any organizationally or personally identifiable information has been redacted from materials.
Our team embraced the Design Thinking methodology to approach this problem. We did this because it would foster a deep empathy and understanding of the problem through research and then enable a creative approach to solving the problem with ideation and iterative prototyping.
Leveraging insights uncovered from the methodology, our team developed three solutions for TC.
- BeAJEDI Goals provides a new model for the organization to adopt that emphasizes Belonging, Accessibility, Justice, Diversity, and Inclusion.
- Recruitment Strategy emphasizes relationship building in communities. Further, it reframes how TC thinks about its Volunteers and Board of Directors.
- The Evaluation Mechanism comprehensively adapts Hendry’s Whole Change Through Learning Theory Model to provide a step-by-step guide for TC changing their organization and its culture to embrace BeAJEDI.
Planning
Guiding the team’s initial steps in approaching our project, several course expectations were included in the Spring term. These included a Prospectus and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
The Prospectus encouraged a review of the organization, a brief of the problem, and an approximation of Scope of Work and timeline. The MOU further refined information in the Prospectus, explored our methodology, and committed all parties to the engagement.
Supplementing the required expectations, the team also produced a team agreement, meeting schedule, and Gantt chart. The team agreement set the ground rules for how we meaningfully collaborated with one another. The Meeting Schedule highlighted topic items for our weekly client meeting. The Gantt Chart ensured project management best practices were incorporated in our consulting effort.
Methodology
Design Thinking served as the guiding methodology as QB Consultancy carried out our project. As a human centered approach incorporating empathy and creativity to address problems, the process suited our efforts to enhance DEIB at an organization addressing illegal dumping. The model of Design Thinking draws primarily from Stanford’ s d.school’ s 5-step iterative process that includes Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test (2012).
With the project’ s emphasis on DEIB, the team determined the process should ensure to embrace the same. The National Equity Project (2017) built upon Stanford’ s model to ensure such efforts are equity centered as well. To accomplish this, the steps of Notice and Reflect were added as ongoing pieces of the process. QB Consultancy embraces these understandings as we sought to carry out both throughout. For the purposes of intentionality, the team placed Notice within the Empathy step and Reflect as a step to conclude the effort.
Empathize
The first step in the Design Thinking process is centered around identifying and empathizing with the stakeholders engaged with the problem.
- Stakeholder Mapping. In order to identify and prioritize stakeholders impacted by efforts to enhance DEIB at the nonprofit, QB Consultancy facilitated a series of exercises with TC staff members.
- Secondary Research. QB Consultancy conducted secondary research around the topic areas of illegal dumping, DEIB, and the Northeastern United States. Qualitative data was extracted from those sources and into a digital board.
- Primary Research. Guided by secondary research, the team discerned interview questions and utilized Qualtrics to gather data from TC’s prioritized stakeholder groups
Notice
Integrating DEIB principles into the Design Thinking process, the Notice step enables teams to reflect on their understandings as they seek to Empathize with others.
- DEIB Session. With the DEIB approach being new to the client, QB Consultancy guided a presentation and conversation as we worked towards shared definitions and level setting.
- Equity Statement. Working from those shared understandings, the team and client collaborated to develop a one pager that captures the organization’s work and commitment to DEIB.
Define
The Define step of Design Thinking sees teams synthesize data to develop deeper insights about the problem, stakeholders, and context.
- Thematic Analysis. Utilizing Affinity diagramming for this analysis, over 1,000 qualitative data points on the research Mural were reviewed as the team worked towards new understandings.
- Insights Report. After reviewing findings with the client, QB Consultancy developed a report to effectively capture our secondary and primary research.
Ideate
Leveraging the insights learned from the previous steps, Ideation sees the use of creativity provoking exercises foster new ways of thinking about solutions.
- Brainstorming Session. QB Consultancy guided a session with the client where we revisited DEIB definitions. Staff were asked to conceptualize solving the problem under different circumstances.
- Session Summary. Capturing important sentiments and ideas from the session, QB Consultancy developed a summary document to ensure the team and client were in agreement.
Deliverables
Design Thinking encourages the use of prototyped solutions so that the team may incorporate the learnings from previous steps into iterative solutions. In completion of the scope of work for this undertaking, QB Consultancy prototyped solutions for the three matters at hand.
- DEIB Goals. Our efforts better informed why TC previously utilized Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in the context of their illegal dumping work.
- DEIB Recruitment. Conversations and research uncovered the importance of relationship building to build a talent pipeline. Further, we advanced a notion of volunteers becoming board members.
- Evaluation Mechanism. QB Consultancy acknowledged these coming efforts for what they are – organizational change. Framing the deliverable as such, established frameworks provided direction.
Reflect
Concluding the Design Thinking effort with a DEIB lens comes a moment to step back from the context of solutions and think about how the effort was approached.
- Equity Pause. QB Consultancy took. a moment after our presentation with TC staff members to acknowledge the work that has been done and how DEIB matters remain ongoing.
- Feedback. TC staff members noted the challenge that can come with discussing DEIB and the admirable ability of our team to navigate those difficulties with them.
