Welcome to Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiative*!

Our DEI Initiative focuses on equipping consultants with the tools, resources, and skills to integrate a diversity, equity, and inclusion framework into their practices and the efforts of their clients.

From 2016 through 2021, NNCG launched the DEI Initiative with the support of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Ford Foundation, and our philanthropic members to provide field leadership through several publications and webinars. 

We continue to collaborate with our members to integrate conversations around DEI into every consulting engagement. We also collaborate with our members to strengthen their ability to work at the intersection of disability inclusion, racial equity, and gender equity.

Each year, for example, we host a series of programs and activities to:

• Improve the quality and effectiveness of consultants to enhance the impact of philanthropy in creating a more just, equitable, and inclusive world
• Recruit, develop, and advance more qualified consultants with deep DEI commitment, methods, and tools to integrate into their consulting practices
• Support our members’ clients in comprehensively integrating a DEI framework in their work.

NNCG’s DEI Institute

Currently, NNCG has the second phase of our DEI Initiative underway: The NNCG DEI Institute. 

The DEI Institute is structured around two complementary trajectories: 

Trajectory 1: An intensive training and peer support program focused on building a cohort of experienced consultants who can effectively integrate DEI into their practices on an ongoing basis. This group will accelerate change within philanthropic institutions currently at a tipping point, helping to expand their internal and external DEI commitment.

Trajectory 2: An effort to recruit, engage, and partner with BIPOC philanthropy consultants as NNCG members to build a stronger pipeline of talented individuals and firms that serve future philanthropic needs in areas such as strategic planning, board and staff restructuring, executive search, and program design and evaluation. In addition, NNCG will elevate DEI issues and skills to the broader audience of philanthropy consultants and stimulate grantmaker understanding of the important role of consultants as change partners to achieve DEI goals.

To learn more about the DEI Institute and the overarching DEI Initiative, reach out to us at info[a].nncg.org. 

Join Us on Our Journey

As an integral part of the NNCG mission and vision, our DEI effort affirms our dedication to leveraging and expanding our membership’s collective expertise to address critical issues affecting the field.

We’re here to support you as you introduce DEI values, lines of inquiry, and goals to clients to help the field move a DEI agenda forward. We also want to be a resource as you and other philanthropy consultants build knowledge and capacity around diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.

DEI is a core competency for an effective philanthropic consultant, irrespective of the field of play. We recognize that not all of our NNCG members will become DEI experts.  However, all of us can benefit from strengthening our internal capacities and methodologies so that we can raise DEI issues in every project of our consulting work.

Look out for our upcoming DEI programming by reading our newsletters and website updates.

We look forward to the continued conversation!