Diversity and Inclusion Statement
The Chesapeake Bay Trust has a mission to promote the public awareness and participation of all local residents in the restoration and protection of our region’s natural resources through its grant-making. In order to achieve its mission and fully perform as an organization, the Trust commits to:
- Fostering the inclusion of individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds including, but not limited to, age, gender, race, creed, ethnicity, national origin, religious beliefs, physical abilities, sexual orientation, military service, citizenship, and socioeconomic status in all of the endeavors of the Trust.
- Expanding the dialogue between diverse communities that lead to new collaborations and identify co-benefits of environmental and community projects.
- Partnering with grantees, donors, vendors, and others who also recognize the importance of increasing diversity in efforts to restore and protect our natural resources and seek new ways to promote inclusion.
- Learning and sharing best practices that increase the inclusion of all local residents in the ongoing effort to restore our natural resources and our communities.
The Trust’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiative
In order to meet these goals, the Trust’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiative was launched in 2008. Our efforts to engage diverse communities are overseen by our Diversity and Inclusion Committee, a subcommittee of our Board of Trustees along with 10 outside diversity experts.
We take the following steps to ensure engagement with diverse communities:
- Maintain a tracking system to quantify key demographics of our grantees and the audiences they serve.
- Require all grant program Technical Review Committees to include members from diverse communities.
- Hire “connector” groups to carry our message and relay what our opportunities can do for key communities. We have hired connector groups to engage predominantly African-American groups, Latino audiences, faith-based communities, and groups within the human health sector.
- Include language on all of our grant program Requests for Proposals (RFPs) encouraging applicants of color and those working with communities of color to apply.
- Follow a procurement policy for our non-grant work which requires outreach to MBE/WBE/DBE firms that is more stringent than that of the federal government.
- Provide incentives for seasoned grantees to serve as mentors to new applicants.
- Restructure grant programs as appropriate to ensure that we continue to serve diverse communities. For example, we transformed our Community Engagement Mini-Grant Program to be only accessible to new applicants. We also changed the language of this opportunity to prioritize community improvements, a recommendation from our Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
These efforts are ongoing and have proven to move the needle on our engagement of diverse audiences over the years. In FY08 when our initiative began, only 10% of our awards engaged people of color. Since then, our awards have been increasingly engaging an audience that better represents Maryland. We recognize that this work is ongoing and ever evolving, and while we’ve successfully increased overall engagement, there is more to be done in supporting the consistent and equitable engagement of people of color. While we do not have target percentages or specific goals, we have a general goal of ensuring that our grants serve the demographics of our region
Next Steps
In 2015, our Diversity and Inclusion Committee identified three under-engaged audiences the Trust should engage more in grant-making:
- communities of color,
- faith-based communities, and
- human health sector.
The Trust is devoted to maintaining our diversity in grant-making and identifying audiences who should be more engaged. Our position is that ALL residents benefit from healthy natural resources, and, in turn, all residents have the opportunity to benefit natural resources. For these two reasons, the Trust will continue to reach out to a wide range of audiences.
