Equity approach

Our intent

Equity is central to the Bush Foundation’s purpose: to inspire and support creative problem solving, within and across sectors, to make our region better for everyone. 

As we work toward being more equitable in our work at the Foundation, we plan to publicly share our successes and setbacks in hopes we can be useful to others. We do so with humility and recognition that we are — and will always be — a work in progress.

Equity is central to the Bush Foundation’s purpose: to inspire and support creative problem solving, within and across sectors, to make our region better for everyone.

To inspire and support creative problem solving

Diversity of thought is a critical ingredient in creativity and innovation. Communities are smarter and stronger when they draw from a wide variety of experience, perspective and wisdom.

To make our region better for everyone

The Bush Foundation is about place—a region of three states and 23 Native nations. This region’s future will be defined by how well every person in it does—at home, in school, at work and in the community. This region’s future, therefore, depends on institutions and systems that work well for all people. Too many do not.

This is not just about whether organizations are intentionally excluding or disadvantaging people. Racism, for example, is not only hateful acts. Racism can also be embedded in policies and practices that are well-intended and meant to work for all, but just don’t. Organizational failings, big and small, can combine to systemically exclude and disadvantage people. These barriers can limit individual opportunity and limit our collective regional potential.

Every person in our region can impact institutions and systems. Institutions and systems are created and perpetuated by people. To change institutions and systems is to change the minds and the actions of people. There is a role for all of us to play.

At the Bush Foundation we believe that bridging cultural differences and adapting organizations to work well for everyone are essential skills for leaders to be relevant and effective—whatever their purpose and whatever their politics. These are skills one has to learn and practice.

• It is learning about and understanding your own history and context and why you think and act the way you do. It is learning about and understanding other people’s history and context and why they think and act the way they do. And it is empathetically adapting to work effectively across differences.
• It is the ability to examine policies and practices to see who may be excluded or disadvantaged by them, regardless of the intent. And it is the ability to work with those affected by policies and practices to design and redesign them to work well for everyone.

Within the Bush Foundation, we are working on these skills to integrate equity into all we do.

Without a doubt, definitions of and conversations about equity and inclusion have changed since Archibald Bush’s generation. Our stated commitment to uplifting the whole region has not. We have struggled at times to live up to our aspirations; at times, our actions have contributed to social, economic and racial disparities. Those shortcomings are real opportunities for us to think and act differently about how we advance equity in our region.

We recognize that there is power in the issues we raise, the questions we ask, and the people and organizations we fund. For us to be effective in addressing community issues throughout the region, we must be sensitive to and savvy about differences such as culture, race, income, gender identity, geography, physical and mental abilities, religious belief, or any other difference that is meaningful in understanding an issue and how it might be addressed. We see equity as part and parcel of excellence. And we are committed to becoming excellent.

As we work toward being more equitable in our work at the Foundation, we plan to publicly share our successes and setbacks in hopes we can be useful to others. We do so with humility and recognition that we are—and will always be—a work in progress.

Our approach

How equity is part of our work

We are working to embed and integrate equity in all that we do—from our major strategic priorities to the countless small decisions we make every day.

We strive to:

• Understand the WHY. To consider or evaluate any policy or practice, we must understand its intent. If it is an existing policy or practice, we must understand the original motivation and goals and how effective it is in meeting those goals.
• Understand WHO is affected. At the outset and throughout a decision-making process we need to identify and engage key stakeholders. We want to ensure we get enough input from enough people to fully understand the impact of doing things the way we have always done them and the potential impact of any change.

How we learn and grow together

We’ve been doing intentional equity work since 2013. The work has evolved over time, as we have grown and changed. In 2023, one of our foundation priorities was to refresh our equity approach, to think bigger and differently about the skills and practices that would integrate what we’d learned over the last 10 years and keep us moving forward.

Here are the core elements of our refreshed approach:

• The most significant decision was to dissolve our standalone equity team. The internal equity work is coordinated by members of our Talent team but owned by the entire staff. Having a dedicated equity team was important when we were designing and implementing our equity work in our earlier years. But delegating the focus on the equity work to a subset of our staff felt increasingly misaligned with the level of commitment and interest our staff brings to becoming a more equitable and anti-racist workplace. Many of our other changes to structure and activities flow from this change.

• At all times, we have a small number of shared priorities to help us to be more inclusive, less racist and more equitable. We call these equity MGEYs—an acronym from our operating value of More Good Every Year. Our org-wide equity MGEYs are set through a collective process. Whenever we have completed the work and learning identified in an org-wide equity MGEY, we can add a new one or identify a new phase of learning or focus. Each person also has an individual equity learning goal as part of their annual professional development plan. (We call these individual MGEYs). All staff are encouraged and expected to use work time for their individual equity learning. Supervisors check in with employees each quarter to support this individual work.
• As a full staff, we have several equity gatherings each year to check in on how we are doing on our individual and org-wide equity MGEYs and to spend time learning and building skills together. We also have a spring staff retreat devoted to our equity work, with time to review and reflect on our overall progress as well as current challenges.
• Both the collective and individual equity work is tied to the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). We have an external partner who helps us interpret and apply our IDI results and guides us in our ongoing learning and growth.
• We weave issues of equity into our board learning agendas, helping board members to build empathy and understanding for the people and communities we serve.
• We understand this work as developmental and are committed to keep learning and growing. We will continue to share publicly what we’ve tried and learned— both what is and is not working.

If you’d like to talk more about our approach for embedding equity throughout our work—or give us advice or feedback on how we can improve, please contact us.

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In 2021, we announced a partnership with two organizations—NDN Collective and Nexus Community Partners—to steward the 2 community trust funds we seeded with $100 million in new funding. Read the announcement.