The Challenge

Challenge 1: Racial Wealth Gap

Black and Latinx households now own just 10 cents and 12 cents of wealth, respectively, for every dollar of wealth owned by White households.

Challenge 2: Racial Wage Gap

Communities of color experience a wage gap that today sees median Latinx and Black individuals earning incomes that are 37-42% lower than their White peers. 

These and other systematic deprivations create pressures on individuals of color and their families. In addition, the generational effects of racial economic and wealth inequality have also placed a strain on service providers who need to address complex issues from multiple perspectives. As multigenerational issues surface and take hold in communities, service providers are being asked to do more with the same or fewer resources, even when the issues are beyond the scope of their missions.

The Cause

Federal legislation and policy along with local practices have been integral to creating a web of structural racism that causes and exacerbates inequality. People of color will continue to be overrepresented in income and asset poverty over multiple generations if we focus solely on individualized interventions as remedies.

By working directly with the people most impacted by racial and economic inequity, nonprofit organizations have access to a wealth of often untapped information and insights, including client-level data and stories. The connections generate social capital that can be leveraged into power to influence the programs and systems that govern their clients’ lives. In addition, as administrators of the social safety net and the trusted representatives of the communities they serve, nonprofit organizations act as the bridge that connects the community to public, private and philanthropic sectors.

Some service providers are already leveraging their assets and strengths to better understand the causes and consequences of racial economic inequity, and they use programs, policy and advocacy to correct these issues. But many more have not done so yet.

The Consequence

A lack of meaningful and flexible funding support is often coupled with the difficulty organizations run by people of color face when attempting to work across sectors (public, private and philanthropic) to leverage meager resources. So, addressing racial economic inequality—including and beyond those immediate needs of the community--requires that organizations leverage the insights and wisdom they glean from their proximity to the lived reality of their clients to play an even more active role in policy and advocacy.

The Remedy

In our Exploring Racial Economic Equity in the Workforce Development report, the Racial Wealth Divide Initiative (RWDI) provides tools and approaches to help practitioners achieve racial economic equity goals that enable underserved, marginalized and excluded community members of color to earn living wages, accumulate assets and build wealth. RWDI has distilled promising practices that address interlocking social, economic and political barriers by considering the contributing factors, naming the problem and designing programs, policy and advocacy for equity.

Policy has played a major role in dictating the current workforce development landscape—where wage and wealth disparity is predictable by race and socioeconomic background. Practitioners have the opportunity to design workforce development pathways with an explicit racial economic equity focus while working within the community to disrupt systems and advocate for change.  Armed with a new way of using data, research, program design, partnerships, advocacy and policy, local communities and their trusted organizations can advocate for systems that support racial economic equity. The task is to leverage solutions born from workforce development programs that generate economic parity and prosperity for people of color.

Policy and advocacy may not be the primary mission of every nonprofit organization. But many share visions and missions that call for ensuring that hardworking families can not only get by but can get ahead and prosper.

In Exploring Racial Economic Equity in Policy and Advocacy report, RWDI outlines how organizations of color can draw from programs to inform and develop policy and advocacy agendas to push for changes that support them and their clients across generations. We also discuss how organizations of color can serve as platforms to further engage funders, particularly those whose efforts are place-based, and form new partnerships with public and private sector actors to address large structural and systemic issues.

Advocacy is the power to amplify the voice of the people affected by an issue in an effort to have impact beyond individual service provision and program design. The aim is to influence and shift structures that govern the social determinants of health and wealth through policy channels.

Bringing It All Together

Program-level outcomes, social innovations and interventions that promise racial economic and wealth equity continue gaining traction at all levels of government. Now is the time to build broad coalitions of likeminded people across communities, sectors and institutions who are willing to leverage their power and privilege for the most marginalized people in our communities.

Community organizations know their clients best and should amplify their concerns, issues and client-centered innovations in discussions with policymakers and funders. Organizational leaders can work with policymakers to advocate for a universal living wage, full employment and the elimination of barriers to wage and wealth parity. A racial economic equity approach can ensure that once adopted, policies will remove institutional barriers, rather than simply mitigate issues that result from inequitable practices.

Integrating policy and advocacy holds much promise as an emerging strategy for community organizing, mobilizing and systems change. We hope that the processes outlined in these manuals can help your staff and leadership work even more effectively for your clients.

We have endeavored to articulate how data, insights, outcomes and emerging promising practices from client-facing programming can be leveraged as strategies for system-level change. Given the magnitude, duration, impact and energy around addressing racial economic inequality, the time to act is now! We are truly stronger together!