Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

IFF is committed to being an inclusive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive organization.

About Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at IFF

Partnering to create thriving communities is at the heart of everything we do. We leverage knowledge, capital, and resources to advance equitable and transformational outcomes in under-resourced communities, guided by our commitment to be an inclusive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive (ARAO) institution that honors communities as asset-rich and as experts in their own stories.

CDFIs work to align capital with justice, bridging gaps in the financial system by increasing access to capital, technical assistance, and other specialized supports when mainstream lenders can’t or won’t reach under‐resourced communities.

IFF’s mission is to strengthen nonprofits that are working hard to ensure all people in all communities have equitable access to health care, child care, housing, education, and other fundamental human rights. In order to do this, we must understand and then interrupt the ways that structural racism permeates our work and distorts the outcomes we seek in communities.

At IFF, that means continually interrogating our products, services, and practices through an equity lens to ensure that they are not perpetuating the very inequities they’re designed to address. This includes advocating for the broader CDFI industry to do away with appraisals, revising our target market criteria, introducing a new Flex Loan Program, and more, as identified in the icons below.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Transformation Team
Equity in Practice
Building a Diverse and Inclusive Culture

Equitable Community Development Practices

Equity in Practice · Community Development Solutions

With the right combination of investment, development, partnerships, and actionable knowledge, IFF is forging into deeper, systems-focused, community-driven, collaborative ways of achieving positive impact for low-income communities and communities of color throughout the Midwest. Catalytic equitable community development is key in the economic recovery of these communities and long-term efforts to close the racial and ethnic wealth gap. IFF’s Community Development Solutions team has adopted equitable community development practices that guide our principled partnership with community-based organizations to activate development projects rooted in community vision.

Equity in Practice · Social Impact Accelerator

IFF’s Stronger Nonprofits Initiative (SNI) aims to support nonprofits led by people of color in navigating systemic barriers to accessing capital and real estate opportunities by acknowledging disparities in lending and providing resources and tools to increase capacity and build vital connections to networks of their peers. As of February 2023, 88 BIPOC-led nonprofits across six Midwestern cities have participated, or are currently participating, in SNI, with an additional cohort in Chicago launched in Summer 2023.

Equity in Practice · Social Impact Accelerator

Chicago’s Cultural Treasures (ChiTreasures) is a four-year equity initiative focused on strengthening, growing, and preserving Chicagoland organizations whose mission is to enable the creation, preservation, and dissemination of art stemming from BIPOC traditions, leadership, and culture. To achieve this, ChiTreasures seeks to disrupt historical philanthropic practices that have resulted in the underfunding of BIPOC arts organizations, provide transformative general operating grants, design and implement technical assistance services to support long-term financial sustainability, and raise awareness and share learnings within the broader arts ecosystem to ensure continued investment. To date, 40 BIPOC-led arts and culture organizations in Chicago have been awarded $14.63 million in general operating funds.

The Journey

Transforming into an anti-racist, anti-oppressive (ARAO) organization is generational work. Documenting our journey—the successes and the challenges, large and small—is critical to our learning and our accountability to ourselves, our nonprofit partners, and our communities. Here’s how the work has evolved:

2017
2018
2019
2019
2020
2020
2023

2017The Strategic Plan

IFF was in the final stages of preparing our five-year strategic plan for 2018-2022 when staff feedback revealed the omission of explicit references to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). That sparked collective action to make EDI one of six foundational pillars of the final 2018-2022 Strategic Plan. In it, the goal to Foster ‘One IFF’ includes language to “cultivate and commit to a culture that values equity, diversity, and inclusivity.”
2018Ad-Hoc Training and Formalization / EDITT is Born

To begin work to achieve the EDI goals set forth in the Strategic Plan, an ad-hoc EDI team was formed. Team members attended a three-day anti-racism training to cultivate a shared analysis of systemic racism. That training was provided by Chicago Regional Organizing for Anti-Racism (CROAR), with which IFF formed a long-term partnership to help guide the formation of our EDI infrastructure. The ad-hoc team became known as the Planning and Design Task Force (PDTF), an interim group charged with shaping – or as one CROAR facilitator described it, “giving birth to” – IFF’s permanent EDI infrastructure.

EDITT

During a three-day retreat facilitated by CROAR, the PDTF: (a) identified the charge and scope of the permanent EDI team, which it named EDITT; (b) created a proposed budget for the next year of EDITT activities; and (c) elected to develop an application process to recruit the inaugural EDITT members, with the goal of representing various identities, institutional roles, life experiences, and skills – and with full participation from and equitable burden-sharing between white employees and employees of color. EDITT was adopted by our Board of Directors as a permanent part of the IFF organizational structure and budget, and our aspiration is that it exists in status equal to any of our core services. This formal adoption is a crucial expression of IFF’s enduring commitment to becoming an ARAO organization.
2019Five Strategic Directions to Advance EDI

EDITT members attended 75 hours of CROAR trainings and planning sessions during this time. Using their shared anti-racism analysis as a foundation, the group created five strategic directions to guide IFF on its journey to becoming an anti-racist, anti-oppressive (ARAO) organization:
- Institutionalize, prioritize and build the capacity of EDITT
- Cultivate staff knowledge and understanding of anti-racism/anti-oppression (ARAO) and its application to our work.
- Create a culture of accountability to communities of color and other oppressed groups, internally and externally, at all levels of IFF.
- Innovate decision making and decision-making entities to ensure equity, inclusivity and transparency.
- Create an organizational identity that positions IFF as an institution working toward becoming ARAO.
2019Staff and Board Education

IFF is committed to every member of its staff and Board attending anti-racism training facilitated by CROAR that explores a power analysis of white supremacy and systemic racism in the United States and how this analysis shapes IFF’s work, grounding IFF’s team in a shared anti-racism analysis and language. The costs associated with this training are embedded in IFF’s organizational budget.
2020A New Vision for IFF

As part of the fifth strategic pillar, EDITT crafted a new vision statement for IFF that was critically and enthusiastically discussed with the IFF Board. The new IFF Vision Statement that was adopted in September 2020 reads: Partnering to create thriving communities is at the heart of everything we do. We leverage knowledge, capital, and resources to advance equitable and transformational outcomes in under-resourced communities, guided by our commitment to be an inclusive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive institution that honors communities as asset-rich and as experts in their own stories.
2020Each IFF Team Begins to Plan

The five strategic pillars developed by EDITT were introduced to IFF’s staff and Board in December 2019 through a series of all-staff presentations, small-group discussions, and departmental planning meetings. Since then, each IFF team/department has begun working to create their own detailed plans – with specific, measurable, actionable goals toward the five strategic pillars identified by EDITT – to advance IFF’s racial equity work in an extremely intentional way. This work continues, with ongoing guidance from EDITT and CROAR.
2023Chief Equity and Diversity Officer Hired

Nakea West becomes IFF’s first Chief Equity and Diversity Officer (CEDO). The CEDO role was created to further develop, implement, and monitor IFF’s strategy both in internal administration and external programmatic efforts. Nakea partners with IFF’s Senior Leadership Team and the EDITT to set an overarching vision for equity, diversity, and inclusion at IFF, and support the implementation of that vision. Nakea also engages internal and external partners to create an inclusive organizational culture in which diverse, lived experiences and perspectives are celebrated and leveraged to tackle racist and oppressive systems, policies, and practices at the intersection of nonprofit facilities and finance.