The Community Foundation for Muskegon County (CFMC) is dedicated to giving a voice and resources to programs that make an impact and enhance the quality of life for people throughout Muskegon County.
The Community Foundation for Muskegon County (CFMC) is dedicated to giving a voice and resources to programs that make an impact and enhance the quality of life for people throughout Muskegon County.
CFMC has been working to build a community of trust in partnership with the community it serves and within its internal team.
The community foundation has an internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee, with at least one representative from each department, to guide staff on an internal DEI journey.
Todd Jacobs, president and CEO of CFMC, shared that the community foundation “can’t prescribe without taking on the journey itself.”
“The committee’s work is centered on how to advance and bring opportunities to the staff to expand their journey,” Amy Moore, vice president of Nonprofit Capacity and Community Engagement at CFMC said.
CFMC staff make an annual pledge to the community foundation’s DEI values and to partner with their direct supervisors to build individual work plans.
"Those work plans are chances for individuals to set intentions around their own growth, and to privately commit to themselves and their supervisor the things that they plan to work on throughout the upcoming year,” Moore said.
Each DEI committee member also serves as a group leader for a carefully curated system of small groups representing a balanced mix of team members from different departments across the staff.
Measures were taken to ensure no one was placed in a small group with their direct supervisors to create safe and engaging opportunities for vulnerability within the small groups.
“A lot of work went into making sure the small groups were diverse. While looking across teams, we also considered different personality types to ensure everyone had a voice. We wanted to create a really safe space for people to talk about how they felt about an activity or whatever topic they would like to learn more about,” Bonita Jackson, development officer at CFMC said.
One activity that the community foundation has leveraged to help them on their internal DEI journey was Archie Bunker’s Neighborhood which aims to position participants to better understand the effects that stereotypes and discrimination can have on various socio-economic groups.
“It was really eye-opening how frustrated I felt, and it also made me wonder what I can do to make things better," Julie Benedict, marketing communications officer at CFMC said.
Jacobs related the social challenges his staff experienced while roleplaying the characters in the Archie Bunker’s Neighborhood activity to the real barriers that community leaders might face.
“It’s interesting to experience these kinds of activities and then reflect on how you’ve been impacted personally, but also how these impacts translate to systems within the community,” Jacobs said. “Through this experience, I recognized that these are some of the barriers people in the cities are feeling. You’ve got community leaders or municipal leaders or school leaders not having a voice at the state level. That’s where the community foundation can step up and say, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to help make sure we’re amplifying the voices of and walking alongside the community.’”
Jacobs shared that the next DEI focus for the CFMC staff will center on ageism, bringing in an expert to guide their learning and drive the small group discussion for the month.
Want more?
Learn more about the Community Foundation for Muskegon County and its DEI work.
Upcoming Equity Signature Series Event: Join CMF and the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project in a virtual interactive workshop on Monday, June 24 for a thorough discussion on making the case for trust-based philanthropy. The workshop will be designed to support grantmakers across various roles who are curious about ways to use their positionality to be a part of this greater movement of change.
Explore the community features in the CMF 2023 Annual Report to learn more about how CMF members across the state are advancing diversity, equity and inclusion.
Visit the CMF Curated Equity Resources to find useful resources in supporting your equity journey.
