Race Equity Statement, Values & Principles
This living document details SNS’ race equity statement, values & principles. We challenge all organizations to create and uphold their own race equity commitments, and encourage interested folks to use this document as a reference.
RACE EQUITY STATEMENT
Service Never Sleeps (SNS) is committed to fostering a race equity-centered organization where all employees, team members, contractors, and program participants feel valued, supported, respected, as safe as possible, and able to thrive. As a Black-led organization, SNS is committed to being a people-first organization and dismantling the pervasive anti-blackness that exists within institutional structures. We commit to acknowledging and embracing the multitude of identities reflected within and outside of our organization, including: gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation or identity, education, disability, and religion. SNS furthermore strives to lead an anti-racist and liberatory framework that is a model for the nonprofit sector, and all sectors of work, in both its practices and its commitment to ongoing work from the inside, out.
SNS strives to:
Prioritize diversity, inclusion, equity, and justice as the core of our work, and the change we seek to create in the world.
Identify and dismantle inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and practices, and continually assess organization progress through various data-driven approaches (qualitative and quantitative).
Conduct organizational decision-making from a justice-seeking and liberatory lens that intentionally considers communities that have been historically excluded, and explores underlying and/or unquestioned assumptions that interfere with inclusivity and/or equity.
Challenge assumptions about good leadership at our organization, and who is well-positioned to lead.
Prioritize a “people-first” culture that feels like a thriving climate for team members, which includes committing time and resources toward employee wellness.
Pursue a culture and infrastructure where Black women can authentically lead in an environment of respect, support, and accountability.
Hold all team members (staff and board) accountable to a trust-based organization, where everyone fulfills their responsibilities, provides/requests support where needed, and works collaboratively and respectfully.
Practice and encourage transparent communication and be receptive to critical feedback regarding areas for improvement and advancement, as it relates to the organization’s equity goals.
Commit time and resources to expand equity learning, improvement and implementation across the organization.
Commit time and resources within our staff and board for individual and collective growth.
VALUES
The following are core beliefs, motivations, and qualities in which our vision is rooted.
a. Shared Humanity: SNS’ north star is a world where everyone is embraced for who they are, and able to thrive to reach their highest potential.
b. Love-in-Action: Love in its holistic form is the driving force behind actively pursuing social justice for all by centering shared humanity.
c. Social Justice: Achieving shared humanity requires ensuring equality, equity, opportunity, and inclusion for everyone, with deep consideration of history, circumstances and context that have and/or currently caused impediments on individual, interpersonal, institutional, and systemic levels.
d. Pro-Blackness: We must actively uplift and empower Black people with the understanding that anti-blackness is a pervasive, violent, and enduring global system of oppression, and its abolition will result in benefits for all communities.
e. Humility: People must actively commit to a posture of learning and unlearning systems, mindsets, and behaviors for continual growth and improvement, with the understanding that perfectionism and paternalism are characteristics of white supremacy culture.
f. Community: A critical aspect of thriving involves being in relationship with others, and one of the most effective approaches to justice, positive environments, wellbeing, and other outcomes involves collective involvement of different identities, perspectives, and roles participating in the shared goal, mission, and/or space.
g. Creativity: Envisioning allows us to dream possibilities beyond current conditions, which allows us to develop innovative approaches to improvement, exploration and other potential outcomes in all facets of life and work.
PRINCIPLES
The following are guidelines that help implement our values through our posture and mission (internal, external and programmatic efforts).
a. Racial Justice: We believe that centering race is critical to pursuing and achieving liberation for all, and we actively do so in all of our work. This includes racial equity (the condition where one’s race does not influence how they fare in society). Racial justice does not exclude other forms of oppression, rather allows us to pursue liberation for everyone with this intersectional approach.
b. Allyship: We believe that everyone has a responsibility to exercise allyship, an active way of life in one’s respective areas of privilege that centers bridge-building to pursue social justice for everyone.
c. Service: We believe that the allyship approach should reject paternalism, and assume a humble posture of service in connection and community with others in pursuit of the north star of shared humanity. While the tireless action toward justice is ongoing, this collectivist approach allows us to rest when necessary knowing that the load is shared, and to relieve others when we are recharged.
d. People-Centered: We believe in institutional frameworks that prioritize people over everything, which includes team member wellness, trust-based teamwork, self work and accountability, investment in growth, disruption of traditional hierarchy, and placing collective wellbeing over individual pursuits.
e. Risk: We believe that because justice work is perpetually necessary regardless of the political and social climate, it will often require courage and perseverance amidst backlash, threat, and other challenges. We also believe that allyship requires assuming the risk of the marginalized, and people should assume calculated risk in their areas of privilege for the greater good.
f. “Forever Work:” We believe that the active pursuit of justice is ongoing, and that a continual humble commitment of learning, growing, and action on individual and institutional levels is critical.
g. Accountability: We actively expect, review, and critique the responsibility of ourselves, our team, and our wider community to live out these values and principles both inside and outside of the workplace, in order to ensure that we are proactively and consistently justice-seeking and liberatory.