Anti-Racism Consultant

Global Fund for Children Organization-Wide Anti Racism Training

Terms of Reference for Anti Racism Consultant

Introduction:
Global Fund for Children is committed to fostering, cultivating, and strengthening a culture of diversity, equity, racial justice, inclusion and accessibility within our organization and we are committed to promoting greater diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility among the organizations and leaders we partner with.

We envision new systems and new ways of being together where power and resources are more equitably distributed. Realizing this vision requires us to identify, prevent, challenge, dismantle and transform values, structures, policies, practices, programs and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism, exclusion and discrimination. It forces us to be humble and to continually activate processes and spaces for reflection, dialogue and critical analysis in which diverse opinions are continually honored and elevated.

While the principles of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility are reflected in GFC’s values, we believe it is necessary for us to create more intentional practices across all functions of the organization that help us go past recognizing the existence of systemic racism, intolerance, and exclusion and create and foster ways of working that proactively dismantle these within our own organizational systems and cultures.

The need:
Global Fund for Children has a growing global team of passionate changemakers committed to shifting the power to community-based organizations and to children and youth. During this growth phase, we recognize the need to understand each other better as colleagues in order to build on our foundational work in DEIA towards greater learning and collaboration (getting ‘unstuck’ in order to progress in our collaborative work). We also recognize that with a white senior leadership team, we need an intentional focus on anti-racism and anti racist leadership as we explore what diversity looks like at various levels of the organization.

We are therefore exploring two concurrent, intensive, cross-organizational streams of work from August 2024 through January 2025. These two streams of work will be conducted by two different consultants/organizations but in collaboration and towards the shared goals outlined above. We recognize that our work on building trust-centered relationships and anti racism will not end in January 2025, but that this process will set us up to continue dismantling structural racism within our organization intentionally and continuously in the years to come.

Proposed Timeline:
Part 1: August 2024 – Introduction and initial discussion on anti-racism with anti-racism consultant (all staff)

Part 2: September – November 2024 – Togetherness Practice consultant leads cross-organization relational work with Togetherness Practice

Part 3: November 2024 – January 2025 – Follow-up anti-racism discussions and trainings with anti-racism consultant (all staff). Consultant to interface with Ubuntu (GFC’s DEIA Committee) to recommend strategies and assist in the development of a global action plan

Anti-Racism Training Consultant:
Global Fund for Children (GFC) is seeking a highly skilled Anti-Racism Consultant/Consulting organization to guide, support and challenge our organization in learning about and creating, implementing, and sustaining anti-racist practices. The consultant will work closely with all staff and GFC board to foster an inclusive and equitable environment that aligns with GFC’s mission to empower children and youth worldwide.

As a global organization, with 63 team members in 18 countries over 5 continents, GFC is looking for a consultant that can support us to build a shared organizational understanding of anti-racist practice and support the development of a global action plan, while recognizing that our understanding and experiences of racism are deeply rooted in regional, national and local contexts and our team will have diverse views and lived experience of anti-racism in their own contexts. The ideal consultant will work with the GFC team to determine how best to balance global spaces that build trust, knowledge and solidarity across the organization, with spaces that take into account different contexts and lived experiences. It will be critical that the consultant contextualizes anti-racism to the diverse contexts where GFC operates as well as a specific understanding of the complexities and intersections with Global Philanthropy. In addition to all staff engagement, we envision this consultant will provide ongoing coaching and support to GFCs DEIA leads on integrating anti-racism in all aspects of the organization’s systems.

We anticipate the consultant will use a blend of methods to support us in developing anti-racist practice within GFC. These may include (but are not limited to):
• Team and board engagement, discussions and trainings on anti-racism
• Brave spaces where we can explore and challenge practice, behaviors and cultures within GFC that contribute to systemic racism
• Peer reflection and learning spaces

Objectives:
The primary objectives of this engagement are:
1. Education and Awareness: To increase awareness and understanding of systemic racism and discrimination, intersectionality, and unconscious and conscious bias among all staff. To understand the intersection of white supremacy, patriarchy, white-feminism, capitalism and their collective role in anti-Blackness and racism. Co-create GFCs definition of anti-racism.
2. Skill Development: To develop practical skills and strategies for identifying and addressing racism and conscious and unconscious biases in decision-making, policies, and everyday interactions.
3. Cultural Competence: To enhance the cultural competence of leaders to foster a more inclusive and equitable organizational culture (across offices and GFCs geographic areas of programming).
4. Action Planning: Advance anti racism, create actionable plans, policies and commitments for continuous improvement in anti-racist practices and bias mitigation.

Expected outcomes:

• Increased understanding of white privilege, intersectionality and power and how it impacts work. Through this we build active allyship in the organization (allies prioritize the voices and experiences of structurally marginalized communities and commit to continuous education on issues of race and racism, allies take tangible actions to support racial equity, including speaking out against racism, advocating for inclusive policies, and providing resources to marginalized groups, allies hold themselves and others accountable for their actions and are open to feedback and growth)
• Increased trust among staff with decreased defensive practice
• To provide GFC leaders with enhanced the cultural competencies to foster a more inclusive and equitable organizational culture
• Increased ability to address inequitable power structures within the organization and disrupt or dismantle them
• To focus on the critical learning and reflection needed to build meaningful anti-racist practice into everyone’s work across all teams (fundraising, programs, grantmaking, operations, finance, communications and marketing)
• Help explore and understand what has shifted in the organization as a result of this work, what needs to be shifted and what GFC can continue to do internally to make bigger shifts.

Consultancy Timeframe: August 2024 – January 2025