Resources
Moving a mission forward can be complicated and difficult work. There are weighty issues to contend with, complex conversations, ambitious goals, and limited resources. To address the challenges that we hear professional communicators and executives regularly confronted with, we’ve compiled the below set of educational resources designed to help you build more equitable communities through purpose-driven communications.
Browse the resources and feel free to drop us a line if you’d like to suggest a resource be added to this list.
Our Words Matter
Building a More Inclusive, Open Workplace Culture
Dismantling Harmful Norms
Challenging Our Biases
Equity and Accessibility Through Branding and Design
Growing a Business Through Equitable Practices
Our Words Matter
| Title | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| How to Use & Promote Inclusive Language at Your Organization | This Hubspot webpage explores what inclusive language is and provides examples to ensure you can create an inclusive workplace and inclusive marketing material. Using inclusive language means employees are more likely to feel like they belong and can be their authentic selves at work. | Hubspot |
| The Essential Guide to Conscious Language | The Conscious Style Guide is a robust website founded by Karen Yin. On the website, you can access style guides covering terminology for various communities and find articles debating usage | Conscious Style Guide |
| 70 Inclusive Language Principles That Will Make You a More Successful Recruiter | Built by Nehemiah Green of Handshake, this guide provides you with principles to remember, concepts to know, and phrases to avoid. While the list is geared toward recruiting future employees, these inclusive language practices are useful at every level of the workplace. | Medium |
| An Incomplete Guide to Inclusive Language for Startups and Tech | This guide provides another perspective on inclusive language. And while it’s written for tech companies, it’s applicable to every organization, focusing on changing deeply embedded habits. | Buffer |
| Choosing Inclusive Language | A brief video that describes certain phrases to reconsider and how to replace exclusionary words with more inclusive words. | Virtual High School |
| Style Guide for Choosing Your Words | A Progressive’s Style Guide invites drivers of progressive change to peruse the vital movement frameworks, decolonizing usage, and up-to-date word choice and phrasing for current theory of change directions and momentum across groups and issue areas. | Sum of Us |
| Guidelines for Writing About People with Disabilities | This factsheet provides guidelines for portraying individuals with disabilities in a respectful and balanced way by using language that is accurate, neutral and objective. | Americans with Disabilities Act National Network |
Building a More Inclusive, Open Workplace Culture
| Title | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| How Organizations Can Support the Mental Health of Black Employees | Written by Angela Neal-Barnett, Ph.D., this article explains the many ways racism in the United States affects Black Americans, and how employers can work towards effectively addressing the needs of a racially traumatized workforce. | Harvard Business Review |
| Making Virtual Meetings More Inclusive | As remote work has become the norm for so many organizations, virtual meetings require the same care and intention that in-person meetings require. | YW Boston |
| Can You Tell the Difference Between Accommodation and Accessibility? | Katie Rose Guest Pryal writes that accommodation requires a person with a disability to interact with a gatekeeper, to ask for something extra, and often to prove that they deserve accommodation in the first place. Alternatively, accessibility means that a space is always, 100% of the time, welcoming to people with disabilities. | Medium |
| Reimagining the Internship to Promote Racial Equity | Internships are often the launching pad to careers, but due to unpaid or minimal wages and lack of welcoming environments, these internships are further out of reach for BIPOC students and students with low incomes. This article encourages organizations to put DEI efforts into internship programs. | Stanford Social Innovation Review |
| Why Organizations Should Embrace “First Draft Thoughts” | Fear of saying “the wrong thing” often holds team members from speaking up and sharing their opinions until their thoughts are perfectly phrased. Rachel Weber at Mission Partners asks you to think differently about the environments of your meetings. Are you giving space for people to speak out, even if the fully-formed thought isn’t yet within reach? | Mission Partners |
| Transforming Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces | Nimra Haroon at Mission Partners shares her thoughts on how the safest of spaces are brave spaces that invite vulnerability and ensure there is accountability to discrimination, harassment, or any other emotional and physical harm to oneself and others. | Mission Partners |
| Navigating a False Sense of Urgency in the Workplace | As a communicator, how often do you get to take a deep breath, sit back, and think deeply? Probably not too frequently. But we need to slow things down in order think strategically and boldly. Kaitlin Quigley at Mission Partners offers some tips on how to fight false urgency, and in turn, create a healthier work environment. | Mission Partners |
Dismantling Harmful Norms
| Title | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Trabian Shorters' Intro to Asset Framing | Trabian Shorters developed the concept known as asset framing, a narrative model that defines people by their assets and aspirations before noting the challenges and deficits. This short video introduces the concept, and more info can be found at trabianshorters.com. | Trabian Shorters + Skillman Foundation |
| How White Supremacist Culture Shows Up at Work | Tema Okun astutely calls attention to the many ways in which white supremacist norms affect us all. These characteristics, such as perfectionism, defensiveness, urgency, and either/or thinking, have become so normalized that we often don’t realize that there are other options and ways of being. Okun offers tips on recognizing when these norms show up and how to push back. | Dismantling Racism |
| How to Confront Racism in Philanthropy | Philanthropies, with a mostly white power structure, channel disproportionate money to white-led organizations, even with their stated missions to advance social justice. This article explores how organizations like Camelback Ventures are trying to change the system and close the funding gap. | OZY |
Challenging Our Biases
| Title | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Implicit Association Test | With this tool, you can choose from a variety of Implicit Association Tests to learn where your implicit biases may be affecting your actions or beliefs. We all have implicit biases that we’ve picked up from our peers, families, and the media, but we have a responsibility to understand our biases and change our actions. | Implicit Bias Project |
| Overcoming Our Biases by Walking Boldly Toward Them | In this TED Talk, diversity advocate Verna Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward “out-groups.” She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the communities and groups that make you uncomfortable. | TED Talk, Verna Myers |
| Confronting Racial Bias at Work | The executive summary of this report details what discrimination in the workplace has looked like on a systems level, while also sharing key findings and recommendations to address racial bias across workplaces. A full copy of the report can be found at raceforward.org/racialbiasatwork. | Race Forward |
Equity and Accessibility Through Branding and Design
| Title | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| How to Write Alt Text to Describe Images | Alternative (Alt) text is meant to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. Alt Text is read aloud to users by screen reader software, and it is indexed by search engines, allowing people with low vision to experience the image. Learning to write Alt Text is necessary for inclusive design. | Harvard University—Digital Accessibility |
| Best Practices for Image Alt Text | Adding an image or a graphic to your content without using proper or empty alt text, can be extremely frustrating for people with low vision navigating your site through screen reader software. This tool will get you started with the basics of learning alt text best practices. | Siteimprove |
| Equity Impact Analysis Tool for Design | This handy flowchart from Mission Partners can be tacked up at your desk for ease of access. In the tool, you’ll find key questions and prompts to help you think about implicit bias, inclusivity, equity, and diversity when creating design materials. | Mission Partners |
| Centering Equity Through Equity-Centered Design Approach | Equity-Centered Community Design, created by Creative Reaction Lab, is a unique creative problem-solving process based on equity, humility-building, integrating history and healing practices, addressing power dynamics, and co-creating with the community. This webpage allows you to access more information about the approach and how to apply it in your organization. | Creative Reaction Lab |
| Designing to Break Stereotypes | In this blog from Mission Partners’ Eleni Stamoulis, you’ll find tips to think more critically about how your organization approaches design work and steps you can take to use design to promote a more inclusive perspective. | Mission Partners |
| Why Social Media Accessibility Matters | Now more than ever, digital marketers should consider inclusive social media content as a “need-to-have” in their strategy instead of a “nice-to-have”. In this blog, Susan Rodriguez of Mission Partners outlines why plain language, asset-based framing, and accessible text are necessary when building social media content. | Mission Partners |
Growing a Business Through Equitable Practices
| Title | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| How to Approach the Strategic Planning Process Through an Equity Lens | When organizations first embark on their strategic planning processes, it’s often a daunting experience filled with more questions than answers. But before you even begin to build your strategic plan, it’s important to put equity at the forefront and consider every decision through an equity lens. In this blog from Mission Partners’ Elena Hilton, you’ll find tips to make sure equity is embedded in your strategic plan. | Mission Partners |
With appreciation to Mission Partners for their contributions to this list.