Whiteboard is seeking to become an anti-racist organization in the next three years. Read the whole plan here.
January 5, 2023
Hi! Welcome to an update from Whiteboard’s Change Committee. We’re an internal team committed to activating on our Anti-Racism Plan. At the end of every quarter, we take a moment to reflect on our progress as a company. We review what we've done well and what we need to do better, and we think it’s importantto do this work in the open. So—let’s review!
As this year wraps up, the Change Committee is ready to enter 2023 with renewed energy and focus. At the start of Q4, the Committee kicked off a new member group and evaluated the progress of our twelve goals. Because of busy end-of-year schedules and a smaller committee size, we wanted to use our time intentionally for the remainder of the year. We continued putting all hands on deck towards Goal 12: launching one community impact project!
This collective effort gave us great momentum: our project is launching in January 2023! Our team—the Committee + 10 additional WB volunteers—are facilitating a free, 3-month after-school program at a local, all-boys Chattanooga school to teach the power of narrative, design, and development to middle school boys. We’ve spent the past couple of months coordinating logistics with the school staff and creating curriculum internally. Our team is thrilled to share skills that can set up young creatives for success, and we are so excited to begin in the new year!
Along with prioritizing Goal 12, we’ve been evaluating the status of our other goals to determine realistic expectations and a plan to finish our 3-year track strong. We’ve fully completed two of our twelve goals:
Goal 6: Secure a person of color to serve as an informal advisor or mentor.
Goal 10: Include an anti-racism pledge in all Whiteboard branding and collateral by the end of 2020.
We’ve identified that ongoing goals in good standing are:
Goal 2: Offer and require staff participation in at least one anti-racist education or training opportunity per year.
Goal 7: Hold regular Whiteboard-wide team hangouts.
Goal 8: Hold quarterly lunch and learns.
Three goals that will be fully completed in 2023 are:
Goal 3: Provide pro bono support to Black or Latinx-led organizations.
Goal 5: Develop a protégé program.
Goal 12: Launch one community impact project.
We’ve identified there are four remaining goals that are at risk to not be completed by the end of next year:
Goal 1: Achieve Racial Parity by end of 2023.
We’ve made significant process towards racial parity but are aware that we are not on track to fully achieve this goal by the end of 2023. Our team is grappling with that reality. We are currently evaluating what we can still accomplish and what we can set in place after 2023 to continue pursuing racial parity.
Goal 4: Provide subsidized support to two Black or Latinx-led organizations per year.
Although we’ve been able to find several pro-bono opportunities, we haven’t found many opportunities to provide subsidized support. In the new year, we’ll be:
- reevaluating what our middle-ground should be between pro bono and regular client work, and
- considering expanding the number of companies we support pro bono, and therefore combining this with Goal 3.
Goal 9: Develop an industry directed initiative focused on advancing anti-racism within the digital design industry.
While we’ve developed strong materials for this, we feel like these intentions are lacking in the action and tangible outcomes we require. As we have noted before, we’re interested in joining other initiatives and supporting programs already in place. Our goal for the new year is to define more tangible outcomes to aim for and push this goal forward—whether that is building something new or joining forces with others.
Goal 11: Launch virtual coffee listening tour with community leaders to assess needs and opportunities.
We’ve discovered that in order to foster leader-to-leader relationships, we need a larger number of Whiteboard leaders involved in this specific goal; we’ll be working on coordinating this in the new year! Because of the similar nature of relationships and collaboration with Whiteboard leaders, we are considering combining this goal with Goal #5 (developing a protege program).
As we look ahead, we’re excited at what’s coming up: we’ll be kicking off our Chattanooga Prep project in January, facilitating a Q1 company-wide book club of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, opening up to new Committee members, and powering through to push our goals towards the finish line.
But we’re also very aware that there is serious work to do—especially in our goals that are at-risk. Taking inspiration from our name, we are exploring different ways to learn, approach our goals, and do better. Looking ahead requires being open to change; we’re excited to do both in the new year!
Bailey Dingley
