In this next part of the series, we’d like to share a few lessons we’ve learned as we reflect on the importance of creating an organizational culture that empowers team members and drives collective progress. At the fundamental level, we found that a dedicated approach to JEDI demands engaged leadership, buy-in at every level, humility and a deeply shared understanding of both our current state and future goals.
If your leader cannot be fully present in [the JEDI] process, don't do it. What the leader does and where the leader spends their time, matters. And it says something to the organization when they don't see those at the top showing up.
Leadership commitment is vital, as is the active participation of the entire organization. From the start of our JEDI work, it was clear that a focus on JEDI cannot be mandated from the top down; it had to be embraced throughout the organization. And, further, for a JEDI audit to be accurate and robust, it must be conducted in ways that are deeply inclusive of diverse perspectives and authentic—which can only be achieved through developing trust between the staff, the auditor and the process.
In addition to London Moore and Associates Consulting (LMAC) hosting staff roundtables and creating moments of input throughout the audit process, we relied on a committee we created in 2022, called our JEDI Core Team (JCT), to ensure broad input and active participation. The JCT brings together representatives from all major teams at IF, incorporating diverse voices from every level and our managing partner. Before, during, and after the JEDI audit, this group made decisions, offered opinions and had a voice—one that wasn’t superseded by senior management because we were all working together as collaborators—in building the vision, solutions, approaches and considerations we would ultimately live by. The result of this full-scale involvement was that we instilled a sense of inclusivity and confidence in a process that might otherwise struggle to gain real support across an organization.
The takeaways here are threefold: showing up matters, trust is foundational and good leadership thrives on involvement. We can’t emphasize these seemingly obvious lessons enough. An intentional effort on all three fronts facilitated buy-in at every level for our JEDI process and ensured that every team member felt the agency to create change.
[We had the] deep conviction that we can't wait until we're perfect internally to do the work.
One of the most daunting aspects of JEDI work is recognizing that there is no perfect starting line and no endpoint. We take the point of view that we will always be learning when it comes to JEDI. There will never be a magic moment when an organization “completes JEDI work”. Instead, it’s a continuous evolution that allows us to approach the work we do in philanthropy more effectively. Being open to that evolution drives our growth as individuals and as a whole organization.
Balancing the celebration of milestones with the humble recognition of ongoing progress is essential. People are motivated by being part of a winning team, so it’s important to celebrate landmark moments. One way we do this at Imaginable Futures is to set aside at least one team meeting each year to share JEDI learnings, ask questions and even raise challenges we are facing so that the team can come together and talk openly around what is surfacing for them and invite other team members to respond. Part of that time is also a reminder to keep pushing forward and stay attuned.
Engaging in JEDI work requires a readiness to face discomfort and a commitment to compassion, grace and forgiveness—for both yourself and your colleagues. Being able to be vulnerable, seeing each other as humans and allowing for new beginnings are key as we continue our journey.
You could easily create a rubric so that your organization scores 5/5 in every category and write that story. But part of your role as a leader is to identify where there is room for growth and build for those opportunities.
In examining our JEDI practices, we set our intentions toward deep inquiry. The importance for us in engaging in the audit was not in affirming our strengths, but in establishing a baseline and identifying opportunities for growth and positive change. Only through hard conversations and deep reality checks did we pull the curtain back and begin the work toward improvement.
A holistic perspective was crucial for determining our initial baseline. We needed to examine not only our internal systems and structures but also the broader impact of our efforts on the community. This comprehensive view helped us move beyond superficial assessments to understand the real work needed. We asked ourselves: Are we genuinely making progress? Is how we are structured creating barriers? Are we understanding and engaging with the broader landscape effectively? Are we involving those we aim to serve in a meaningful way?
During this process, we worked with LMAC and full team to develop a rubric that serves as a benchmarking tool for where we are today in our work. Whether addressing internal strategy, HR policies, grantee partners or power imbalances in our work with partners, being realistic about our starting point and from that, coming up with a roadmap on where we need to focus now and into the future to have meaningful and actionable steps to advance, are all growth opportunities.
Examining our assumed progress and path forward on JEDI has required pausing to reframe and recontextualize what we understood to be right, whether that is in our structures, our internal culture or how we show up with partners. But from these truths, we are at once aware that we can do better and that we have the capacity to be better. We've already begun this work by prioritizing immediate actions that we worked on this year while developing, to start, a 4-year plan to sustain our momentum into the future. While our commitment to JEDI is ongoing with no definite endpoint, we now have a clearer path to guide our progress.
In the finale of our 3-part blog series, we’ll dig deeper into our JEDI rubric, what others can take from it, and where we are going from here.