Project Team
This research project was led by Research Action Design in collaboration with the Racial Equity to Accelerate Change Fund (REACH) team at Borealis Philanthropy.
Research Action Design (RAD) builds the power of grassroots social movements through codesign, technology development, and community research. Our participatory approach is grounded in curiosity and compassion, threading together RAD’s deep skillsets across a range of disciplines with the knowledge and expertise of communities directly impacted by systemic violence and inequity. RAD builds long-term relationships with organizations and organizers to support mobilizing and activating communities to realize their visions for systems change and cultural transformation. Find more information about RAD at https://rad.cat.
Borealis Philanthropy is a social justice philanthropic intermediary working to resource grassroots movements for transformative change, and build bridges between funders and organizers to support movements working to make a future that serves all of us.
Founded in 2015, Borealis has grown to include collaborative funds working to enhance our collective impact within and between movements across the country. From Black-led movement-building, to queer and trans liberation, to disability justice and inclusion, Borealis’ work is rooted in the understanding that in order to upend oppressive systems, we must support the people most impacted by those systems. Within Borealis, the Racial Equity to Accelerate Change (REACH) Fund is focused on expanding the capacity of racial equity consultants to work with nonprofit organizations. The Fund invests in practitioners to develop and scale tools and strategies for the benefit of the nonprofit sector. Find more information about Borealis Philanthropy at https://borealisphilanthropy.org.
Research Justice Co-Design Process & Methods
The case study project for the Racial Equity to Accelerate Change Fund (REACH) is a research and evaluation co-design project, with an orientation to Research Justice. The research methods used in this report not only recognize the expertise of racial equity/racial justice practitioners (sometimes referred to as REACH cohort members in this report) but also engage practitioners directly throughout the research process.
In the Fall of 2022, Research Action Design (RAD) and the REACH team at Borealis Philanthropy launched the co-design phase of the project. During this phase, the teams outlined the initial vision, design logic, research domains and questions, and audiences for the report. A draft design was presented to the REACH cohort to help shape the design logic, research domains, and audiences. During the co-design session, the REACH cohort advised the team to refine the design logic to be more reflective of liberatory practices, calling out that there is no master narrative or one way of doing this work and a need to lean into multiple stories as well as allowing for community building and peer learning among the REACH cohort.
In August 2023, a participatory analysis session with the REACH cohort was held to present and review the preliminary themes captured based on the co-design session, listening sessions, and interviews. The aims of the participatory analysis session and the review period that followed were to gather practitioner feedback on what the RAD team heard. Following the analysis of the preliminary themes, a draft narrative report was shared with all participants in the project for review and confirmation of their quotes and narrative. The narrative report culminates the listening sessions, interviews, and thematic synthesis review process with practitioners and their partners and clients. The participatory analysis session and the narrative report review and confirmation process (from September to December 2023) were used to refine and finalize the narrative report.
It was through this community-led process that it became clear that this research would not lead to a single case study. Therefore the report does contain more, and there are many other stories that we believe can and need to be told and heard. There is no single path.
Based on the co-design phase of the project, the design logic was modified to include three listening sessions (held in March 2023), each focusing on either healing justice or network/cohort models. Following the listening sessions, the RAD team conducted 21 individual and small group interviews with both REACH cohort practitioners (from May to June 2023) and their partners and the clients they serve (held in July 2023), along with demographic survey data from interviewees. In addition to an open call to all cohort practitioners, specific interviewees were also proposed by the project team based on participation and stories shared during the listening sessions. REACH cohort practitioners identified partners (or “clients”) who were interviewed. After the data collection phase, a preliminary thematic synthesis of findings was prepared for review by the REACH cohort and the REACH team at Borealis Philanthropy.
The stories highlighted in this report provide a reality-based overview of the life cycle of racial equity organizational development (RE OD) work from the perspective of REACH Fund grantee racial equity practitioners and the non-profit leaders and organizations they support in this journey toward justice and liberation. We hope the stories shared in the report can be a learning tool and help demystify what it takes to conduct this work and the variations and evolution of what RE OD work looks like today and moving forward.