Review Stories, Lessons Learned, and Best Practices

This door provides access to the stories, lessons learned, and best practices gathered from organizations who are currently doing inclusiveness work.

The experiences of other organizations can be extremely valuable, especially when your organization is taking on work in an entirely new arena such as inclusiveness. The Denver Foundation has compiled a collection of such experiences.

Stories from the Journey

The Denver Foundation awarded a limited number of grants to Denver area nonprofit organizations in 2005 to support their work on inclusiveness. The experiences of these organizations are documented in Stories from the Journey. You can also learn more about Denver Foundation grantees by reading the Executive Summary of the Final Evaluation Report.

  

Innovations from Organizations Doing Inclusiveness Work

 

• New Hire Orientation: How the Denver Center for Crime Victims Adapted Their Previous Orientation to Include Inclusiveness
• One of Rocky Mountain Youth Clinic's Inclusiveness Strategies: A Book Club and a Movie Club
• EETAP: Lessons Learned from Inclusiveness Initiative
• EETAP: Building More Inclusive Organizations Initiative: Evaluation Report
• EETAP: On the Ground: Learnings from Still Developing the Toolbox: Making EE Relevant for Culturally Diverse Groups
• Hiring an Inclusiveness Coordinator: Denver Museum of Nature and Science

  

Testimonials

Testimonials from participants in inclusiveness efforts within nonprofit organizations will inspire and support your organization's efforts.

  

Courageous Conversations

Courageous Conversations is the title of a strategy developed by the Community Resource Center (CRC) in Denver for the purposes of  discussing substantive issues about inclusiveness.  At the 2009 Inclusiveness Conference (sponsored by CRC and The Denver Foundation),  participants were given a copy of the "agreements" that participants make when they participate in Courageous Conversations. You can also read two examples of how organizations (cityWild and Colorado Women's Aenda) are using courageous conversations. Visit Related Links and search under "Courageous Conversations" for more on this topic.

Inside Inclusiveness: Race, Ethnicity, and Nonprofit Organizations

• A research report on nonprofit organizations in Metro Denver; best practices and barriers, from The Denver Foundation (in Executive Summary and Full Report versions).
• Download PDF version.
• Request free hard copy version.

  

Inclusiveness at Work: How to Build Inclusive Nonprofit Organizations

Inclusiveness at Work: How to Build Inclusive Nonprofit Organizations includes a fictional case study of an organization doing inclusiveness work. This narrative is provided for illustrative purposes only. Topics include: forming an inclusiveness committee, engaging in inclusiveness training, hiring inclusiveness consultants, creating a case for inclusiveness, gathering and analyzing information, completing and implementing an inclusiveness blueprint, developing a more diverse and inclusive board of directors, recruiting and retaining a diverse base of volunteers and helpers, and building inclusive funding and membership strategies.

Inclusiveness at Work: How to Build Inclusive Nonprofit Organizations includes 218 pages of narrative, 220 pages of worksheets, and 35 pages of appendices.

• Download complete PDF version.
• Order $35 hard copy version. Since the workbook was published in 2005, the content has remained the same in the print version. When we launched the Inclusiveness Project Web site in 2008, we adapted that content for the Web site with only minor changes (e.g., not using the word "module"; not numbering worksheets by chapter numbers of the print version). But in late 2009, we made substantive changes in the content of Step 3 (Making the Case). We encourage you to print off the new narrative and worksheets from the Web site and insert them in your hard copy of the workbook, so that you are working with the most current content. You can find these materials at www.nonprofitinclusiveness.org/step-3-making-case. The hard copy of the workbook is still a medium that many people prefer using. And users of the hard copy can be assured that we will inform you of future content changes that are posted to the Web site.