Governance, or how decisions are made in an organization, is one area where RE practitioners are decolonizing the nonprofit industrial complex. To Tracy Kunkler at Circle Forward, racial equity is baked into governance. Circle Forward supports networks and networked organizations to co-design and integrate systems of consent-based collaborative governance that are fit for purpose. Kunkler says, “It’s not governance in a box. It’s not about having six people around the table when we used to have two. It’s not about finding a copy of bylaws off of the Internet and pasting our name on it. It’s a humbling and layered conversation about inner work, examining unspoken rules and norms, and shared learning.”

Traditional governance models place decision-making power in the hands of the same few leaders, even though their decisions affect other people in the organization more directly, especially those on the margins, who must suffer the consequences of these decisions without consent. Consent is not consensus—not everyone has to be part of every decision made at an organization, but neither is it majority rules. Dee Washington, also at Circle Forward, says, “Even democracy has its level of violence. If I can get 51% of the voters to agree with me, to hell with the other 49%. The principle of consent has to be in place.” That principle requires that “people responsible for decisions take time to identify, and be transparent about, who is included in the process and how.”
In the case of Nature Connection Network (from the previous case study), a small group of leaders were driving its “Transformational Year.” They anticipated the changes would be well received by some member organizations and make others uncomfortable. Two of the leaders, Lisa Donahue and Lucia Colombaro, say they are very clear that they do not want to leave anyone behind.

“The leadership circle has stepped forward in accountability to develop a set of premises and principles, ¹” says Colombaro. “We spent a lot of time debating whether to tell members to take it or leave it. You’re either on board or you’re not. And what came out of that, at the guidance and insistence of two BIPOC leadership circle members, is that there has to be a third way. It can’t be just binary: yes, no. You have to give people an opportunity to be cautious, to be uncertain, or even resistant. We believe in people working from will.”

That “third way” of “working from will” is similar to what Washington at Circle Forward describes as “consent-based” decision-making. ² To reach consent, NCN is updating its website to transparently acknowledge past harm and share the details of the Transformational Year and the proposed changes, holding online discussions and informational sessions, convening the executive directors of its member organizations, and pausing their conference, which is NCN’s flagship annual event, in order to focus on this work. Elsewhere in this report, Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz at RoadMap Consulting describes the work of RE organizational development as an “organizing project.” Similarly, by building community, fostering mutual support, and sharing ideas for deeper transformation, these NCN activities try to mobilize everyone towards the same direction even if they are starting from different points in the equity journey.

Washington says of consent-based decision-making: “All of this takes a lot of time. The reason why it takes so much time is because fundamentally you’re building trust. The only way to build trust is, when I say I’m hurting, you care. So the work of building consent-based communities is a…I won’t say slow…it’s a front-loaded process because there is a lot of work that has to be done first and it takes time. Once we have trust and consent, we are flowing and things move much more quickly in decision-making. But in the beginning, it’s a lot of weeding through power dimensions, fears, and concerns.”

Inclusive governance doesn’t mean everyone has an equal say, but it’s not always the people with the highest positional power that has the most say either, which is closer to the more traditional and hierarchical approach. In the case of DC Greens, an equitable approach might mean people on whom a decision will make the most impact should have more say. As part of the RE organizational development work, DC Greens adopted a RASCI framework. The framework has significant equity implications. Fatimah Ahmad explains, “In the past, if I was the person whose job responsibility aligned with the work of [a working] group and had the training and experience, my opinion could still be discarded if the other people [in the working group] just agreed with each other—which was strange.” Using the RASCI chart, the new way of decision-making elevates people with responsibilities and skill sets most related to a decision (the R, or responsible, in the RASCI framework), sometimes even over those with higher positional power, who is likely to serve the consulting (C) or informed (I) role.

Other bodies were developed in DC Greens for specific decisions. For instance, an Equity Cell was established, composed of staff from different levels. Among other things, this group is charged to review the equitable distribution of labor in DC Greens, and along with the executive director, has approval power over the organization’s hiring plan.

Inclusive governance also requires people to approach disagreements and conflicts in a healthy way, a difficult skill for many to master. Instead of holding tensions generatively, most people tend to avoid them. Anouska Bhattacharyya at YWCA Boston says, “Dissent is not a dirty word, but most of us are socialized to not rock the boat, to keep opinions to ourselves. Or we feel if I disagreed with you, somehow I’ve caused harm. Ultimately, we can’t have a candid conversation. If you are my boss and I think, well, you like Kit Kats, so I’m just gonna keep my mouth shut about Snickers. So teaching folks how to offer up different viewpoints, especially when the stakes get higher than a candy bar, is really important. It may be you still decide as my boss to go ahead and only offer Kit Kats, but at least I feel like I did justice to myself by sharing what I thought was preferable.”

To turn away from a traditional model of leadership that has a false veneer of perfectionism, infallibility, and absolute authority, vulnerability is essential. Mark Liu at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance says, “There’ll be some level of accountability people want from leaders. Their feelings might get hurt. So it’s important to make sure leaders feel resourced and present and have the capacity to not to be reactive, but actually really listen and take things in.” Setting this tone, Liu believes, allows “people to be vulnerable and share their truths and then hopefully be able to move forward and actually have some type of resolution or restoration. People have to be able to come with their best selves and are willing to take some level of risk and be uncomfortable.”

In addition to vulnerability, inclusiveness is another essential ingredient. RE practitioners set the tone and expectations of inclusiveness early on in their engagement. Cynthia Silva Parker at Interaction Institute for Social Change explains, “In the early stages, it’s always important to have an internal team that is guiding the work that isn’t just the management team or the leadership team, or all people with positional power. There needs to be a vehicle where staff at different levels can contribute to the thinking about how we are moving this conversation and this work forward together.”

Dee Washington adds that people who are most impacted need to be integrated because “their voices get left out the most, especially in racial equity work.” To her, the inclusion of those most impacted is not only to have better strategies, but the work of inclusion is itself the strategy. “The development of an integrated group of people with different power dynamics” is the model for democracy that we envision.

To illustrate this, Washington and Kunkler share an example of a client, whom Circle Forward has supported in building a more consent-based governance system by including “organizers and people who are impacted by the food systems, and working people of color.” By hearing these voices, the white leaders were “deeply appalled” by the harm that they had caused. Kunkler says, “Consent brings the stuff out from under the rug. The relationship and the trust that had been built through this consent process really allowed the self-reflection and accountability for the harm that was happening in that group. It launched them into deeper equity work.”

A consent governance process emphasizes that equity work is not just an intellectual or technical project, but a relational one. Washington remarks, “I’ve done racial equity and systems change work before, but it was the first time I’d ever seen white people backed into understanding their role in creating spaces of inequity the way I did with [this organization], where it became a launching point for deeper transformation.”