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 and workplace 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 dismantling the pernicious anti-blackness that exists within our organizational 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 inclusive, anti-racist 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 any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services, and continually assess organization progress through various data-driven approaches (qualitative and quantitative).

  • Review 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 inclusiveness and/or equity.

  • Require board-level thinking about how systemic inequities impact our organization’s work, and how best to address that in a way that is consistent with our mission.

  • Challenge assumptions about what it takes to be a strong leader at our organization, and who is well-positioned to provide leadership.

  • Practice and encourage transparent communication in all interactions.

  • Commit time and resources to expand equity learning and implementation across the organization.

  • Commit time and resources to support employee wellbeing across the organization.

  • Commit time and resources within our staff, board, committee, and advisory bodies for individual and collective growth.

  • Be open to critical feedback regarding need for change and advancement as it relates to the organization’s equity goals.

VALUES

The following are core beliefs, motivations, and qualities in which our vision is rooted.

a. Social Justice: Equality, equity, opportunity, and inclusion for everyone, with deep consideration of histories, circumstances and contexts that have and/or currently caused impediments. SNS’ mission centers proactively working to ensure this in broader society, in our workplace, and within individual team members.

b. Shared Humanity: A world where everyone is embraced for who they are, and able to thrive to reach their highest potential. (The achievement of social justice)

c. Love-in-Action: We believe that love in its holistic form is the driving force behind actively pursuing social justice for all by centering shared humanity.

d. Service: Building allies that equip people to exist in community with each other, and work towards shared humanity through five manners:

  1. Diversity: Service allows us to move outside of our usual circles, build community in various/different spaces, and connect with others.
  2. Posture: Service allows us to center those who are impacted through a humble position of listening and supporting what is asked and needed of us.
  3. Connection: Service allows us to engage with issues on deeper levels through empathy, compassion, proximity, and perspective.
  4. Solutions: Service allows us to be a part of innovative solutions through joining our communities to address pressing problems and advance racial and social justice.
  5. Mutuality: Service allows us to have impact, but also be impacted by the experience in how we learn and grow.

PRINCIPLES

The following are foundations that are based on our values, and help drive our 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 does not exclude other forms of oppression, rather allows us to pursue liberation for everyone with this framework.

b. Pro-Black: We actively uplift and empower Black people with the understanding that anti-blackness is the most pernicious, violent, and enduring system of oppression in existence globally, and its abolition will result in benefits for all communities.

c. 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.

d. “Forever Work:” We believe that the active pursuit of justice is ongoing, and that a continual commitment of learning, growing and action on individual and institutional levels is critical.

e. People-Centered: We believe in institutional frameworks that prioritize people over everything, which includes team member wellness, trust-based teamwork, disruption of traditional hierarchy, and placing collective growth over individual pursuits.

f. Creativity: We believe in applying the premise of envisioning and building to all facets of life and work, in order to pursue improvement, exploration, and potential beyond the current state.

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.