Hi everyone, just a reminder that if you’re free on May 23rd at 10am Pacific, please join Hildy Gottlieb and me on this free webinar to discuss Catalytic Thinking and how to get our sector out of the rut. Auto-captions will be available.
One of the greatest joys of my life is being a parent. I always joke though that having a baby is like getting a multi-year federal grant: At first you’re elated, then you realize how much work it takes, and the requirements change every year. One of those requirements is feeding them. Children, with very few exceptions, are picky and unpredictable eaters. They go through phases where they’ll only eat plain pasta. Or bread innards. Or cashews they find on the floor, garnished with dust bunnies.
Why am I talking about kids’ eating habits? I bring it up because one of the questions I get asked most is “How do you keep going when you try to effect change, especially around DEI, and it just goes nowhere?” Colleagues bring up attempting to get their board to adopt salary transparency, or their ED to approve trainings around anti-racism, or their foundation board trustees to give more funding to marginalized-communities-led organizations, etc. Often these efforts get rebuffed, and it feels futile.
A lot of our work is like an ongoing quest to feed the brussels sprouts of equity to finicky toddlers. We know it’s good for them. We try to make it as appealing as possible. And often they will dismiss it, or they throw a tantrum, or they reluctantly taste it once and spit it out. But here’s the thing. According to research, it takes kids 8 to 15 exposures to a food before they develop a liking to it. However, most parents give up after 3 to 5 times. (And that’s why so few kids have kohlrabi as their favorite vegetable).
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