A report released last Wednesday by Toronto's
DiverseCity Counts project documents the positive contribution diversity makes to nonprofit boards.
The
report,
Leadership Diversity in the Nonprofit Sector: Baby Steps, Big Strides and Bold Stances, analyzes the results of three surveys distributed to more than 420 nonprofits in the GTA.
The report is the fifth installment in a series of research papers on leadership diversity in the GTA released by
DiverseCity Counts, a multi-year research project that is itself one of nine initiatives of
DiverseCity: The Greater Toronto Leadership Project.
The newest report focuses exclusively on the nonprofit sector, exploring "a whole bunch of ways that diversity can benefit nonprofit organizations," says Sandra Lopes, manager of policy and research at Maytree, one of the Leadership Project partners. "For examples, [diversity] helps organizations come up with new ideas, it helps them bring better services to their clients, helps them to be more responsive to the community and helps them improve their fundraising efforts."
"There’s definitely strength in numbers," states report author Chris Fredette, assistant professor at Carleton University, in the media release. "Once a critical mass of 30 per cent leadership diversity is reached, we see an increase in the benefits of diversity experienced by the organization. What's more, we found no downside. Diversity does not lead to more conflict or distrust between board members as some have suggested it might."
Despite the overwhelming evidence that diversity on nonprofit boards leads to greater overall effectiveness, the report also revealed something troubling: visible minorities continue to be underrepresented in nonprofit boards in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
"The numbers revealed that diverse leadership is quite low compared to how diverse the population is," says Lopes. While 40 per cent of the GTA is made up of visible minorities, of the 4,254 board positions examined in the report, only 15.6 per cent are held by visible minorities.
"If there are these benefits to be found in diversifying—and the research suggests that there is—we have an opportunity to really reap these benefits in the GTA exactly because we are so diverse," says Lopes.
DiverseCity Counts has come up with an action plan,
Ten Tips to Diversify Leadership, that organizations can follow to diversify their leadership and reap its attendant benefits.
"The Ten Tips draw on the [findings of] the report and are our work in diversity more generally," says Lopes "Basically it's really about making a commitment to making diversity an overall strategy of the organization."
Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Sandra Lopes, Manager Policy and Research, Maytree