Seniors in Service was one of only four local nonprofits chosen to participate in the 2022-2023 Tampa Bay Equity Incubator (TBEI) inaugural cohort. TBEI’s goal is to help nonprofits be more equitable, inclusive, and increase capacity to more closely reflect the communities they serve.
With support from Pinellas Community Foundation and expertise from Inclusivity, Inc., we received expert cultural competence coaching, consulting, and workshops to educate our staff, leadership, board, and volunteers about how diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) can be woven into our organizational culture and services. As a result, we made positive changes like adding actual stakeholder photos on our marketing materials instead of stock photos, adding a Spanish translation option on our website, creating a cheat sheet with common Spanish phrases for our non-bilingual staff to use with clients, and even translating our entire volunteer recognition event to accommodate both English and Spanish-speaking attendees.
In addition, we now have at least one staff member from each impact area who enthusiastically serves as an Equity Champion. Equity Champions meet monthly to ensure changes recommended in our equity coaching sessions are embraced and implemented by each of our programs. Equity Champions also lead monthly Diversity Equity Inclusion discussions at our team meetings. All staff participate in expert trainings provided by Inclusivity, including “Inclusion Begins with I.”
For over 39 years, long before Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) became a topic of conversation, Seniors in Service has served diverse, traditionally underserved populations with a focus on equitable outcomes. Now, after participating in Tampa Bay Equity Incubator’s inaugural cohort, our entire team is poised to respond as “equity champions”, sharing the belief that the presence of diversity plus the practice of inclusion within an equitable environment is vital for ongoing innovation and success.