“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. ”— James Baldwin
The past year and a half have made the entire world stop, reflect, and adapt. We’ve had to become more resilient and more mindful, not just of WHAT we change, but of HOW we change. As an organization, our entire mission is about change. We support civic and cultural institutions to make shifts in both internal and external ways: their ways of being and thinking, policies and procedures, hiring practices, programs, marketing, funding, and more. The goal of these organizational shifts is, ultimately, for institutions to become more responsible, caring, authentic, and intentional to the communities they serve.
As a small, young organization, we’re taking this moment to examine the ways we might also shift, adapt, and grow in the direction of greater equity. Our first three years in existence have been focused on establishing a well-functioning and impactful digital program. The Change Network has seen immense success in that time, having welcomed nearly 150 member organizations across 12 countries around the world since its inception. Our team grew over the years as well, and under the leadership of our Head of Programs Raquel Thompson, we made notable improvements to our curriculum, strengthening our framework and offering more content and meaningful engagement opportunities to our members.
With our program and curriculum in a stable yet evolving place, the changing climate of our world has asked us to focus in a different way this year. Interest in the Change Network is growing with every new application cycle, presenting us with new challenges in organizational and technological capacity. We went from onboarding 12 new members in April 2020 to 34 new members in April 2021. Questions started to arise about how we can continue to grow our membership exponentially while still providing fresh and responsive content, an intimate experience, and a supportive community environment. And how do we do that with a team of five and still foster a work culture grounded in care, rest, and equitable productivity?
Over the past year, we grappled with these questions and struggled through both known and unknown gaps in our systems, culture, and infrastructure. We experienced tensions and interpersonal conflict. We had a-ha moments and opportunities for deeper connection and growth. We experimented with new rituals, tools for accountability, and engaged in dialogue, not just about the work we do, but about the ways we wanted to work with one another. Harms surfaced. We made note of the very real ways that even in an organization dedicated to equity since its founding, White Supremacy Culture finds ways of showing up, especially when outgrowing our technology created more stress on our staff. These conversations were hard but necessary; many of these conversations remain unresolved as we work to shift priorities and make space for deeper inquiry toward effective and sustainable solutions.
Larger changes stacked on, as we shared the decision of our founding CEO Nina Simon to move from full-time staff member to volunteer board member, making way for Courtney Harge to join us as our new leader. In this time of great transition steeped in both excitement and ambiguity, led by Courtney’s deepening vision for impact, we made a choice as an organization to pause and slow down. This moment of pause is marked by a welcomed combination of rest, reflection, and strategic action. Inspired by the words of adrienne maree brown, we’re taking some time to “move at the speed of trust.”
To support these shifts in the most intentional and effective way possible, we identified partners to guide us through these critical internal changes. Our two new consulting partners—who are both aligned with our values and strategic direction—are also experts and boundary-pushers in their respective fields. While we are still early in these partnerships, we are excited to share more about who these partners are and why we chose them to help us strengthen our internal culture and technology.
The first of our partners is Harriet's Apothecary. Over the past year, we’ve identified internal areas that we want to grow and build in, specifically individual and collective wellness, team dynamics and interpersonal relationships, organizational culture, and team learning. We are also seeking to discover how to operationalize this work in ways that help us to actively create the world we want to see through our work at OBFA in a way that feels activating, joyful, and healthy.
In the earlier stages of this work, we had some essential and foundational conversations with Dr. Kamilah Majied, contemplative inclusivity and equity consultant, mental health therapist, clinical educator, researcher, and internationally engaged consultant on building inclusivity and equity using meditative practices. (Big thanks to Board Member Beck Tench for introducing us to Dr. Majied!) Dr. Majied skillfully and empathetically facilitated group dialogue with our team to explore conflict transformation and relational healing.
Building off these foundations, our work with Harriet’s Apothecary will seek to further explore how principles of Healing Justice can support our internal culture-building through an anti-racist, anti-oppressive lens.
Harriet’s Apothecary healing village includes Adaku Utah, Jasmine Burems, Julia Bennett, Leah Penniman, Naima Penniman, Shamilia McBean, Taja Lindley, Dimitrea Tokunbo, Erika Totten, Ola Ronke, and Eva Turner
Harriet’s Apothecary is an intergenerational, healing collective led by the brilliance and wisdom of Black Cis Women, Queer and Trans healers, artists, health professionals, magicians, activists and ancestors. Founded by Harriet Tubman and Adaku Utah on April 6 2014 and originally based in Brooklyn, NY, they are committed to co-creating accessible, affordable, liberatory, all-body loving, all-gender honoring, community healing spaces that recognize, inspire, and deepen the healing genius of people who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of color and their allies. Their mission states that Harriet’s Apothecary “envisions a world where Black, Indigenous, and People of color have the power, healing, and safety needed to live the lives we desire for ourselves and our communities.”
Through ongoing conversations assessing alignment and mutual capacity, OF/BY/FOR ALL has worked over the last few months to develop relationships with Adaku Utah and Erika Totten, who will serve as the lead facilitators and coaches for our work over the remainder of 2021. The goals of our partnership are to:
Assess individual and collective needs around Healing Justice in the organization
Cocreate practices to support resilience, sustainability, and Healing Justice
Build collective analysis, skills, and praxis around Healing Justice principles and implementation
Harriet’s Apothecary Coach and Healer Erika Totten
The phenomenal members of Harriet’s Apothecary offer gifts in Healing Justice centering Black liberation both virtually and in-person across the country and around the world. We’re so grateful and excited to further deepen our work with them while surfacing ways to support our team to thrive both in their work and in their lives. We invite you to learn more about their important grassroots work, events, services, and more on their website at www.harrietsapothecary.com.
Rightfully so, the urgency for institutions to do better by their communities is rapidly mounting, creating an increased need in the civic and cultural sectors to make tangible changes toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. Interest in the Change Network has increased, and, we experienced a real strain on our technological capacity and human resources.
Of equal priority were the needs to continue providing an excellent experience for our members while caring for our staff. As a five-person, all-BIPOC staff, making sure that our team is technologically resourced to do its work well and efficiently was key. Through Courtney’s leadership, we made the choice to temporarily pause certain aspects of our program, specifically our monthly All-Network Calls, to give our team the time and space to work through these tech challenges and find solutions with a knowledgeable partner by our side. Goals of this work include:
Assessing and making changes for our technology to make it more effective for both our staff and our members
Make it possible for more people to have more efficient access so we can continue to grow and help our members expand their own impact
While the core content of our program is not changing (outside of our usual ongoing evaluations and improvements), the way we deliver our content will likely be changing in amazing ways with the help of 1909 DIGITAL, our second partner. 1909 DIGITAL is the team behind the overhaul of our tech, ensuring that we build a more intentional and responsive member experience. They are a tight-knit, Indianapolis-based digital marketing agency with an extensive technical background and deep expertise in the nonprofit sector. This makes them a great fit as we strategize and implement a user-focused online experience that will best support our members.
Perhaps more importantly, their team values closely align with OF/BY/FOR ALL. Their core values are to live authentically and transparently, be down-to-earth and smash goals, and stay both local- and globally-minded. They use an Agile project management approach with a focus on their team members being “family first - health first - mental health first.” It’s important to 1909 to have an eye on global trends, culture, and social issues. Their name is inspired by the historic quote, “We are no mean city,” which has local connections to allyship. You can learn more about the story behind 1909 DIGITAL’s name on their blog.
Lori, Chris, and Jarred are co-owners of the 9-person 1909 DIGITAL team.
We’re so excited to move forward in these partnerships, and even more excited to see where we will end up on the other side of these initiatives. We’re working with a healthy mix of care, intention, strategic planning, curiosity, and uncomfortable ambiguity and seeing what emerges. We’re embracing not just change… but HOW we change, just as we invite our members to do every day. We’re confident these partnerships will support us to locate and trust our internal North Star in ways that will allow us to grow, expand, and make an even greater impact for the organizations we serve, and ultimately, for the communities they serve.
Former Community Catalysts Mateo Mossey and Lauren Benetua smile during the Radical Imagination workshop at the 2020 Change Network Member Retreat.
In addition to the internal organizational shifts happening over the next few months, we’re also experiencing changes in our staff. We announced last month that after two years with OF/BY/FOR ALL, our Community Catalyst Mateo Mossey was leaving the organization to pursue their own creative endeavors. Mateo’s contributions to the growth and success of OBFA are invaluable and we wish them the very best in their next steps. Mateo has worked tirelessly in service of our Change Network community and we’re amped to support them in their growth. Additionally, our founding Community Catalyst Lauren Benetua will be transitioning into a brand new role at OF/BY/FOR ALL: Community Datalyst! She will still be serving our Change Network community, however, her focus will be on measuring our participants’ progress and success. Of her new role, Lauren remarks:
"As OF/BY/FOR ALL turns over a new chapter with new objectives, I, too, have the opportunity to pursue a new found love for the work: managing data, tracking progress, and measuring impact. Being a data-lover (and a list-lover + Virgo + geek), it’s a dream to step into this new role at the organization I helped build."
Because of these transitions, we’re thrilled to announce that OF/BY/FOR ALL is now hiring for two new Community Catalysts to join our team! Learn more about the positions and our hiring process here. These transitions are occurring at a serendipitous moment in our organization’s evolution. Change can be challenging, even scary. But as we all know, change is necessary and unavoidable. When we learn to pay attention to the ways we are changing, and how change can align more and more with our values, our purpose, and our vision for equity and liberation, where we end up on the other side of the change process can be something even more beautiful than we ever imagined. Change will be a constant theme for us as an organization, and we’ll keep you updated on how this work is evolving over the next few months. We are honored and humbled to be on this journey alongside all the other change-makers taking steps to grow and do better every day. Let’s do this!