DEI Update Jan 27, 2021: Volunteer Outreach and Recruiting

Gift of Adoption is committed to broadening and dedicating resources to outreach efforts that will increase the diversity of our volunteer, staff, donor, and grant family communities – with the goal of reflecting the diversity within the communities in which we operate and the inclusive foundation upon which our mission was built 25 years ago.

With our 2020 year-end code of conduct renewal process, we asked chapter and national board members to provide their demographic information for the purpose of establishing a benchmark for measuring progress. The charts for the race/ethnicity of our chapter and national board volunteers compared to the population in the U.S. (2019) are below. This information establishes a foundation for our outreach/networking plans.

Race/Ethnicity U.S. Census Bureau July 2020* GOA October 2020**
American Indian Alaska Native 1.30% 0.54%
Asian 5.90% 6.52%
Black or African American 13.40% 11.41%
Hispanic or Latinx 18.50% 2.72%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander 0.20% 1.09%
Two or More Races 2.80% 1.63%
White 60.10% 76.09%
102.20% 100.00%
* Census Bureau data did not equal 100% ** 23% didn’t provide/preferred not to say

To broaden our outreach and measure our progress, we implemented the following during FY21 A (July – December 2020)

  • New board members, in the code-of-conduct process, are asked to voluntarily self-identify their race/ethnicity and sexual identity. From 7/1/20 – 12/31/20, 33% of new Chapter board members self-reported as either Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color or as LGBTQ +.
  • We expanded our chapter recruiting plan to include outreach to 15+ organizations, including the NAACP, National Urban League, LGBTQ Journalists, Pride at Work, and the National Hispanic Association of Journalists with the goal of building relationships that lead to increased diversity within our chapter and national boards and staff. We are hoping to on-board new board members from these organizations/connections made and plan to expand outreach efforts to many more organizations, professional employee groups, informal and formal community leaders, corporate affinity groups, media outlets, small businesses that are owned by / provide service to Black, Indigenous and People of Color, etc. in the months ahead. We welcome ideas and connections from existing volunteer members to further expand our outreach efforts.

GOA Communications Review. In the coming year, our plan is to engage a small volunteer task team of communications and marketing professionals to review a broad sampling of our social media posts, press releases, and other marketing communications to identify opportunities to make them more reflective of our inclusive mission. This includes an opportunity to listen and share more directly the voice and perspective of the (now) young adults whose families received a Gift of Adoption grant.