Anti-Racism Town Hall Wrap-Up
At the end of February we held an Anti-Racism town hall with special guests from Bluecoats and Columbus Saints. We couldn’t get to all the audience questions in the time we had but representatives from both groups were kind enough to give us their answers at a later date. Here’s what they had to say!
Bluecoats
Many of the ideas you presented were followed by the expectation that these goals will be achieved years down the line. Has the Bluecoats produced something like a timeline over the next couple of seasons for the sake of incremental progress?
One top priority of our Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council is the formation of our Action Plan. As you know, the fourth step of our Four Action Steps is the formulation of this long term plan. We are using industry-standard strategic planning principles to create this plan. It will have the goals, objectives, and action steps for each of our priorities, and will include responsible parties and projected dates for completion.
You can see our current Strategic Plan here for context. This was created in 2019, and a new one will be published for 2022-2026. Our D&I Action Plan will be a separate document, but with a similar planning philosphy. We will additionally be creating an internal dashboard that our board, executive leadership, and DIAC can use to monitor our progress.
Our progress will be outlined publicly in the annually created Diversity & Socio-economic Impact Report (the first of which we published recently, here.) We are keeping reports like this, as well as our Strategic Plan, and the forthcoming D&I Action Plan, at bluecoats.com/policies for now.
@ Bluecoats: You spoke a lot about efforts to remove barriers for members to increase diversity but what are you doing to increase staff diversity? People who need financial assistance to march probably can't afford to work for free and if I recall correctly your corps (like lots of other World Class it's not just you) has unpaid internships which are a huge barrier. Is there a plan to phase those out?
Yes - we are eliminating unpaid internships in 2021. We have always covered travel, housing, and meals, and we will now always be paying intern positions. We have never had unpaid contractor or employee positions. That said, nonprofits like ours (and virtually all mission-oriented non-profits from small agencies to hundred million dollar institutions) rely on volunteerism. We do however differentiate volunteerism from internships (ie, a mom volunteering on the food truck or a Boy Scout serving as a show usher is different from an intern helping to operate our programming.)
Can a profit motivated organization create the real, community based solutions that will make a significant difference?
I would wholeheartedly disagree that we are a profit-motivated organization. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and we very rarely end the year with significant surplus, if any at all. When we do, that surplus is always reinvested in programming. No one at Bluecoats profits from the operation of our programming and no program participant pays for 100% of their experience. All money raised by the organization through fundraising or revenue-generating fundraising business is devoted to programming or program-operation overhead.
That said, I think I understand the spirit of the question. In the last several decades, drum corps has largely evolved into a national program with a grand vision for reaching the "pinnacle" of achievement. We create programming that costs a lot, and we spend a lot of money creating a program that exists on a grand scale. There are many benefits to model: we create incredible shows, with amazing experiences for our performers who travel the world, perform shows created by Tony and Emmy award winning creators, and perform for hundreds of thousands of fans (and perhaps millions more online). Programming like this allows us to be something aspirational for thousands of marching band students around the globe. This programming does not generate a profit.
But, programming like that also means that organizations often choose not to spend money on programming that reaches underserved students, or more community-oriented programs . That is absolutely true and absolutely something that the Bluecoats organization is working on. As I mentioned during our Town Hall, we are working on programs like our partnership with En-Rich-Ment and the En-Rich-Ment drumline, and programs like Learning Access and School of the Arts to fundamentally re-examine our mission fulfillment and ensure that we are reaching all types of students. We are working to fulfill the original roots of our mission: to bring music and the arts to our community. This means bringing our mission to under-resourced students and to populations where the "national tour" model of drum corps don't ordinarily serve.
So yes - we are working diligently on that. As we enter the next 50 year chapter of the Bluecoats organization, I am excited to see these efforts flourish and for hundreds (and hopefully thousands) of students to come through new types of Bluecoats programming that reaches into our local and/or under-resourced communities.
Columbus Saints
Can a profit motivated organization create the real, community based solutions that will make a significant difference?
On the question; yes, it's possible that a for-profit organization can create real change. This is something we discussed at a board meeting last year, after reviewing an article from Harvard Business Review on Ethical Business Culture. It's a combination of committing to a specific goal and change, then monitoring and following through on those deliverables, and continuing some of them even during low business sessions.
We are glad to have been able to make two donations of $50: one towards funding members at Columbus Saints and one towards efforts of the Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Council at Bluecoats. If you would like to contribute to funding more honorariums for participants and their organizations please check out our Ko-Fi page. Thanks again to both organizations and stay tuned for our next town hall on women’s leadership!