Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Intercultural Competence

We aspire to build intercultural competence by generating awareness through an intentional focus on all people to create equitable opportunities internally in the organization and externally in the communities we serve.

Inclusive Workforce

An inclusive workforce that is reflective of the communities where we live and work, is central to CRF’s mission. This means that each staff member genuinely respects and appreciates our differences, including, but not limited to, geographic location, race, culture, gender, nationality, religion, socioeconomic background, physical ability, sexual orientation, and experience. It also means that we work to ensure that all people have an equal opportunity to be heard, succeed, and lead fulfilling lives by providing the relevant resources to those who may experience or start with some sort of seen or unseen disadvantage. Promoting CRF values and inspire continued dialogue, learning, and cross-cultural exchange.

DEI Goals

The DEI Committee was formed in 2018 to guide these efforts at CRF. Soon after its inception, the committee quickly realized that before CRF could truly respond to the needs of the people and the communities that we aim to serve, we needed to consider CRF’s organizational cultural identity and better understand the individual identities of all staff. The committee engaged a local partner to help us with these efforts, which led to a variety of activities, such as IDI assessments, experiential learning sessions, and racial workshop. By participating in these activities, CRF staff have developed a DEI foundation from which each person can increase their own cultural competence. In addition, CRF is spending time looking at our organization as a whole and collaborating with staff in ways that we can take action through our work to fight for social justice, equity, and transformation change. We encourage all staff to learn more, ask questions, and even challenge the status quo as we all are on this journey together. We believe transparency is key to creating an inclusive culture and taking action to make change. We understand that while we’ve started this journey in 2018 and have made some changes in our work, there’s still so much more work to do.
Our Goals:

• To influence the culture of CRF through education, keeping Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion competence as a driver in each of CRF’s Business Lines and Shared Services.
• To integrate DEI lens through policies and processes, both, internally and externally.
• Strengthen CRF’s business model by using education and awareness to build tools and resources that break systemic barriers to be more effective in diversity and inclusion.
• To have our vendors reflect the communities we serve, resulting in an increase in vendor diversity

Our Employee Resource Groups allow our staff to come together and bring their backgrounds, experiences, resources, and ideas to the table as we have tough conversations and look at all that we do through a DEI lens. Not only are we collectively working on dismantling systemic barriers in all that we do but providing our employees with opportunities to grow, develop, network, and learn more about the communities where we live and work are essential to intercultural competence and raising awareness injustice.

Employee Resource Groups

• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee
• Professional Learning Groups
• Forward Economic Justice Committee
• DEI Book Club
• Employee Assistance Program through our partner Insperity