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Reigniting Service on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11

I remember clearly the moments surrounding the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC. I was working on Wall Street, having eagerly arrived to my new gig at the New York Stock Exchange, drinking a cup of coffee in the nook next to the big screens that had not yet started ticking with the day’s market activity. I remember hearing my colleague cry out. I remember everyone racing outside. I remember everyone looking up to the darkened morning skies.

It was a moment – similar to the spring of 2020 – when the world fundamentally changed. As much devastation and grief as we had in that moment, we also had an immediate sense of the importance of service and community. I walked home that morning, down the Manhattan streets that were suddenly crowded with terrified people instead of aggressive taxi cabs. Quiet strangers busily walking past each other transformed into a citywide support network offering spare cell phones to connect with a missing loved one and collectively cheering when someone picked up the other end of the line.

That sense of community extended for months, in New York City and beyond, and sparked a generation that deeply understood the importance of service. And, while some of the more divisive, hateful messages we received following the response to the attack muted what was possible, our national commitment to service expanded.

Twenty years later, we have that same opportunity in front of us. In the wake of a global pandemic, a long overdue racial reckoning, and a massive transformation of our professional lives, we have the chance, once again, to anchor ourselves in service to our communities and to each other. We have a chance to fight those hateful messages – whether they are loud violations of human rights or quiet everyday inequities – through a deeper connection to service and volunteerism.

Today, on September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance, I encourage us all to recommit to investing in our community through skilled volunteerism. We each have experiences, skills and superpowers that we bring to our lives every day. How can you lend those to the community, waiting for you just outside your doorstep?

The Great Resignation and the Social Sector

“I’ve never seen anything like this.”

I’ve heard this line on repeat over the past few weeks as I’ve talked about the current state of the workforce to colleagues and friends in the nonprofit sector.

The past few months have shepherded in what many are calling “The Great Resignation”, with more than 65% of U.S. workers seeking a new job. At the same time, businesses across sectors that held on hiring during the uncertainty of 2020 are now hiring at rapid rate. This high volume of job seekers and job opportunity is creating significant disruption in the workforce and has leaders and managers across sector scrambling to retain team members and plug capacity gaps.

While this is problematic across all industry, it is particularly straining for the nonprofit sector, which is systemically under-resourced in human resources. For those of you who are friends and supporters of Common Impact, you know that the core organizational building blocks such as technology, finance, and operations are sorely underfunded at most organizations. Of all these critical functions, human resources often gets the short shrift, with few organizations having the capacity, expertise or budget for dedicated strategic HR and talent management.

The Great Resignation is testing the sector in new ways. Nonprofit leaders, already dealing with a year plus of crisis, will need to manage their programs with a less trained and tenured team. Nonprofit staff, already suffering from burn out of varying degrees, will need to compensate for open positions.

As a sector, we will need to fight the immediate fires that are arising. We also need to take this moment to make the case for deeper investment from funders in the nonprofit workforce. Skilled volunteer efforts can play a powerful role on both fronts. They can provide short-term tactical HR support – providing best practices for hiring and negotiation, quantifying the full benefit of nonprofit roles, and structuring internal career trajectories. They can also build the systems and support we need from our corporate and philanthropic funders to sustain organizations past this current crisis – to hire the right leaders, build proactive, equitable hiring practices, and to foster sustainable, connected workplaces. These solutions are within our grasp. Once unlocked, they will enable nonprofits to deliver a powerful professional experience to job seekers of all ages.

On Freedom & Juneteeth

On June 17th, President Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday. The holiday commemorates the day, on June 19, 1865, that the last enslaved African-Americas learned of their freedom, marking the formal end to slavery in the United States. In many ways, the federal recognition of this holiday is a signal of progress. It is the latest, loud signal that the racial reckoning brought forth by the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans last spring is translating to a deepened understanding of our country’s systemic racism and the need for change.

The private sector has certainly heard that clarion call. Over the past year, we have seen many companies announce or renew their commitment to fight racial equity – internally with changed business practice and externally through community philanthropy and volunteerism. This June, we saw a steep rise in companies celebrating Juneteenth, leaning into those commitments with announcements of large grants, wide sweeping volunteer events, and a flood of social media messages.

Still, the new fervor behind Juneteenth is a reminder of how far we have to go. It is a reminder that slavery has not ended. It has merely been redesigned with new forms of human rights violations, discrimination, and pay inequity.

So, while it’s heartening to experience the staying power of this modern civil rights movement, we have to ensure that companies are making true systemic, operational change – not being performative. We need to ensure that the volunteerism that happens during moments like Juneteenth is designed to rally and educate volunteers – not to make them feel like they’re just checking a box.

I was caught in the tension of this moment during Juneteenth, when I had the chance to sit down with Yusuf George, Managing Director at JUST Capital, to record the latest episode of Pro Bono Perspectives. JUST Capital is holding companies accountable for their racial equity practices, including their anti-discrimination policies, pay equity, employee diversity, community investments, and more.

One moment from our conversation stays in my mind:

“When we think about companies truly translating their racial equity narrative to action both internally and with their community engagement practices, how many companies are there?” I asked.

“No company is there,” he quickly stated.

No company is there. That doesn’t mean that companies aren’t taking significant leaps forward on this critical journey – I’ve seen those leaps up close. That doesn’t mean that companies are just playing a marketing game when they say #BlackLivesMatter. It does mean that we have a long way to go. It also means that nearly every company is on this journey – and we have a much greater ability to be transparent about that journey. Every corporate CEO in America is in the company of others who are learning, working, and making mistakes. CEOs across all sectors need to be talking about where they’ve made mistakes in the past, where they’re stumbling and messing up, and where they’re making progress.

Today, as we look forward to the Independence Day holiday, I encourage you to think about freedom in this context. To know that we’re still all fighting for our country’s freedom, and that we need to release the constraints of rosy-pictured shareholder and funder reports, and be honest and talk about the constant, challenging, necessary work of ending racial injustice.