 Thanks everybody for joining us, I'm really excited to have this conversation with you all today. My name is Patty de Beau and I'm the president at Parsons TKO. PTKO is a consulting firm that works with nonprofits and other mission driven organizations on the strategy data and technology surrounding their outreach. So we work with communications marketing fundraising and it teams on all of their outreach work. We've got a great group of panelists with us today, Kate, Sue Ann and Jim and we look forward to introducing you to, and you may also see my colleagues Mickey and Lisa from PTKO and poppin in and out of the chat so if you have any questions or issues, please feel free to pop them there in the chat and Mickey or Lisa will help you out. But otherwise we will just get rolling. I'm really excited to have the conversation on this topic today of diversifying our audiences and I wanted to share a little bit of context about why we put this together and I mean what we've been thinking and talking about. I think it's important to recognize that we are having this chat in the moment of our kind of current cultural context as well. And over the last couple of years since George Floyd's murder in 2020 organizations from large to small have really been re examining the way they operate and the way they communicate. And that's rightfully so it's probably long overdue in many cases. And I think we as the sort of communicators fundraisers and other outreach professionals in this sector have also been grappling with how we manage this and how we talk about it. And for whatever reason over the last several months I have been in a number of conversations where someone has said to me, we really want to diversify our donor base or we really want to reach a more diverse audience with our comms and marketing. And, you know, to be very frank sometimes that question doesn't always sit right with me, and as if diversity itself is the goal. And so I've had some really wonderful conversations with colleagues trying to unpack that and understand how we can get to, you know, a deeper understanding of what our role is as folks who are doing communications and outreach with our audiences. And what goals should we be setting and what kind of examination of our practices do we need to do. And I think, you know, the punchline is it boils down a little bit just a good communications practices in general. But it's been a really interesting series of conversations I've had one on one with folks and I'm really excited to bring together the group today to hear more about what our esteemed panelists have to say. So I'm going to wrap up with the intros and questions. I did want to just kind of pull the group really quickly and understand, you know, how are these conversations happening in your organization. You should see a sort of, you know, pull pop up on your screen momentarily in zoom but I also welcome you to kind of pop your answers into the chat. If someone asked on your team recently, how do we diversify our audience. And if so kind of how was that received what is your team doing about it. You know I'm really curious to hear from the group today like where you are in the journey of having this conversation with your team. So please feel free to chime in and let us know what your team is thinking and talking about. So to get us started. I wanted to, I will kind of pose a question and then ask each of our panelists to sort of introduce themselves in their organization, and then to also just kind of dive into that question. And so the first question is I wanted to understand as a baseline for the folks that are on our panel today, talking about who your organization's kind of core audience has been historically. So what does it mean to you as you're thinking about expanding that what kinds of new audiences are you seeking to reach. I'm going to go across my screen, and maybe just start with Kate real. Thank you so much Patty and thank you to everybody for tuning in today it's great to be here so I'm Kate we are a senior director of strategic communications for the Urban Institute in Washington DC. So urban is a nonprofit research organization focused on social and economic policy. My role there and lucky to lead a team of fabulous communication strategists and media relations staff who are really focused on this question of how to best package up our organization and deliver it to our target audiences, and ideally in ways that inspire impact in action. And so to get to your question Patty I think, historically our audience, we've been around for a while, we were founded in 1968 by LBJ. So given that foundation, our audience has traditionally been very Washington DC centric very much within the bubble of primarily federal policymaking. In recent years, we've really evolved that concept and really expanded it to think about our audience as what our president calls change makers, and she defines change makers as anybody who's in a position to take the data and research that urban is generating and apply it and really, you know apply it to making better decisions to creating some kind of broader community impact with that data. That federal policy audience is still super important, but we've broadened it out to include, for example, a community organizers working on housing affordability issues or a philanthropist who wants to make an investment in producing poverty and wants to get, you know, evidence on what the best strategies are to do that or a rural community leader who's looking for advice on how to mitigate the effects of climate change in their community. So I think we're where we've really put energy like we're definitely thinking about diversity in terms of racial diversity and want to be reaching communities of color in addition to white communities but I think where we've had the most success is just broadening that universe of who are the people that could really benefit from the work that we're doing that could benefit from knowing about us and I think that's where we've seen some good. That's great thanks for sharing that Kate, I will pass it off to Sue Ann. Hi everyone, I'm Sue Ann Tannis. I'm Senior Director in the Graded Communications at the United Nations Foundation. Basically the UN Foundation exists to really support the mission and work of the UN to make a world a better place, a place that is more equal, more just, more sustainable. At UN Foundation, I really lead on what I call the three C's content channels and creative and basically the measurement of how those things perform. And I'm supported by a wonderful team who really is passionate about what we're talking about today. I think Patty your question was, you know, who have we historically viewed as our organizations core audiences. And I think that used to be primarily US based people who were globally engaged or globally interested in making our world a better place, whether that's moving the needle on climate change, gender equality, global health. And I think what has happened over the past two years specifically, especially in the context of the global pandemic is that that audience for us has become more global and I'll talk about this later but we saw it coming through in our data first and foremost, that we were having a bit of a shift in our data in terms of who was visiting our digital properties. It was, you know, skewing to the point where it used to be majority US, and it did to those 35% US and 65% outside of the US. And so basically seeing that shift that demanded us to really look at who are we really trying to target. We're just resonating with the most and then how could this all go well for not just our work and our communication strategy but also the work at the UN. And that's basically the evolution path that we've been on and have been gathering some interesting insights and connecting more broadly globally around some of the issues that we know our core to the ones work. Great. Thank you, Sue and and I want to pass it to Jim you for your. Hi, everyone. My name is Jim who I'm the executive vice president of audience at participant. I've been at participant for around three and a half years, started off running strategy and more recently moved over to much more an operational role in this newly formed audience team which largely oversees our digital activation across social media web and also email. And, you know, for us, it's really at what you know, participant I'll give you a little bit background of what we do participant for first and foremost, we are a film company, and we've made. We produced films that you guys may have heard of an inconvenient truth spotlight American factory, Roma Judas and the black Messiah, and these are all also, you know, films that have won a lot of awards which is really great to see. And it was always was founded in 2004 by Jeff school, who may have heard the school foundation, but Jeff was also, you know, he made his, his, his billions as a co founder of eBay, and after really went and created a foundation to really start to tackle some of the most significant issues of that are affecting humanity. And then also really looking at film and storytelling is a key way for for people to really be able to be inspired by stories, and to think differently and to think about ways to really be able to take greater action. So, a lot of what we do right now is so much of our diversity pathway and really I think it's not just diversity but it's also diversity and belonging and inclusion. So much of our evolution starts internally starts with us starts with us as a company starts with us in terms of our culture. It starts with our values. And I think so much of this is really, as I mentioned it is a journey is not a is never a moment where we say okay we're done or we've succeeded or, you know, mission accomplished. It's a continuous evolution in terms of how we look at ourselves, you know, in how we relate to each other, and also how we relate to our partners, and how we relate to our audiences as well. So if you think about all the different films that I just that I just listed and other films that are in our pipeline. Our audience has traditionally been very, very affluent, very much left leaning and democratic leaning, and also predominantly more Caucasian than the US population. But we start to see a shift and I think a lot of that shift really does start with who we work with and the artists that we work with and the stories that we bring to life with the different artists that we work with so as you as as our evolution continues and as our slate of films, both in the documentary and narrative side begins to evolve. We also see our audiences evolving to and so I think it's really just important to recognize that diversifying really starts again internally starts with you starts with your organization starts with your values. And that's the that's probably the most authentic way to really begin to diversify the people that you talk to, and how you talk to them, and who you start to develop partnerships with. And so for us, this is again, very much a long term journey and the only way that we can really point to our progression is really around the arts that we bring to the world, and the artists that we that we were able to give a platform to. So, but from there, our job is after the movie comes out. Our job is to build impact campaigns around certain titles. And this is where a lot of my role comes in which is a lot of fun is how do we start to solve this problem of, yes, we've been able to reach a larger, more diverse audience. How do we now get the more engaged in the change that we're trying to create and get the more engaged with the partners that we're trying to support on the ground, a lot of the impact partners that we work with. And how do we get them to come back and continue to be participants with us and with our partners, so that the next set of films down the road, continued to really be able to really build that level of audience infrastructure. So that people will come back and continue to support not only our films, but most importantly, our impact partners to. Great, thank you Jim and everyone there is already so much to dive into what you all have shared. I wanted to start by running in on something that Sue and shared about exploring the data around your audiences and you know as I have thought about this topic. One of the things I keep coming back to is, there are a lot of kind of core, good practice comes and outreach practices that really are kind of very impactful in helping to quote unquote diversify your audience or reach new audiences. About just being intentional with who you are trying to reach making sure your contents relevant and having the good infrastructure and in place to support that. And we've got actually some thoughts in a blog post on this that maybe one of my colleagues will share in the chat, but I wanted to talk about this idea of data because Sue and I think you hone in on something interesting which is there was actually insight in your data where your audience was not what you expected. And so maybe you could just share a little bit more about that experience like what kind of data practices do you have in place to sort of monitor and understand who your audience is. And once you all realized that, you know, what are you doing with that data and information going forward. Yeah, happy to share more in that if Tony's on the call, he would know that we have spoken at nauseam about you know just what it means to build a data culture within a marketing communications team in particular. And so we have been obsessive about measuring and monitoring and tracking our audiences across every single platform, not just understanding the banding metrics, you know, like, you know what is our engagement Ray what are our reach, but also drilling deeper to really begin to establish and identify personas for the folks are visiting our property so that's been pretty much a mainstay of the work that we do. And we do that, you know, from daily to weekly to quarterly to monthly to annually and sort of use that to really shape our strategy. You know when it comes to audience it's really interesting because like you said the data started to reveal that shift to us and you know the big question but what do you do when you see that shift happening when you know that you've been sort of designing and and planning your communication strategy around is another type of audience. For us that shift was really the start of more intentional earnest activities to diversify our content and who was represented in our content. I'm really huge on passing the mic right. Who do we pass the mic to to ensure that we're elevating voices that the audience that is showing up to our content can see themselves represented in those people so whether it is indigenous people who are on the lines of climate change whether it is a girl or a woman in Bangladesh, who is advocating for gender equality against all odds it's sort of like we took the opportunity to really raise those voices. And then for us another strategy that worked well for a campaign that we launched around gender equality called equal everywhere was to really go big on the UGC. And then we also generated content invite people to our website to share their own stories of how they were tackling the challenge of gender equality in their communities, but also coming face to face with it, ensuring intimately on what those experiences were like. It really, you know, helps with representation because not only are you inviting the stories, but you're giving them a platform that they can also share with their communities who can be assured that when they come to our properties they will see themselves represented. So that's sort of how it unfolded for us and I think to this day I'm always just in awe especially as a woman from outside of the US. You know, I like to refer to myself as a quadruple minority in many aspects but that brings me great joy to know that we're doing it can we do better absolutely right, but the key thing is to really as I said past the mic wants to understand that there is not only opportunity, but really strong signals that diversification will augur well for you. I love that idea that like you already had the diversity in your audience you just needed to start meeting people where they were and rethinking your content and again just like great comms practice of like really producing relevant content for the people that you're trying to do that instead of saying, I'm going to reach this audience and I don't know if we have anything relevant for them right it's a, in some ways it's a little bit of a backwards way to think about it of just like wanting a diverse audience whatever that means, not knowing if you have relevant content. And what strikes me about that is whether you're talking about kind of new content practices or strong data. What that actually requires is some investment on the part of your team your organization to implement those things. And so I'm curious from the other panelists you know if anyone has ideas like, how are you having these conversations with your team and you know able to advocate for like we need investment in particular things right it's it's not just like we change our mind and want a different audience and it happens we actually have to invest the time and the money. How are those conversations happening and maybe if you have examples that you could share. Yeah I can jump in so I'm lucky to work at a place that really prioritizes diversity equity and inclusion from the top, and I feel like, you know, over the last few years, it used to be. The DEI was kind of like the separate things so like we did our jobs and then when we had time, we would do the DEI parts of our jobs. But for me that's completely changed in the last three to four years where it's really fully integrated into everything we do. So our communications team is thinking about these questions about audience and the language that we're using this idea of, you know how to have credibility in those audiences is really top of mind for us. So we've invested a lot of resources into thinking through and planning and several years back we actually hired some DEI consultants to do an audit of our content and so they looked at a bunch of our publications and they were, you know, kind of looking at the language and the way that our authors were describing the people at the heart of our social economic policy research and they found that some of the language was, you know, a bit alienating a bit aloof, you know kind of that cold detached research or voice, and given that so much of our research focuses on, you know, people with low income people experiencing homelessness. We have since put forward just a greater effort to be a little bit more thoughtful and a little bit more sensitive, as far as how we're describing the people at the heart of our research and so we've invested some resources into some internal tool kits. We just call them the language tool kits and so we have guidance for people that are writing about people coming out of incarceration. So we're experiencing all these different stigmas, just to make sure we're doing our part to not perpetuate harmful narratives and not perpetuate stereotypes. So that's kind of been an internal movement and you know we're hoping to at one point share that more broadly but I guess to Jim's point earlier we would consider ourselves are so still evolving, you know, and still very much kind of a learning place. Thank you for being here and I just love hearing your perspective cadence and I also just want to just highlight the one, the one phrase that really resonated with me in terms of what so I am saying around passing the mic. Because for us as a content company. We're working with people right in terms of who like which filmmakers were working with. And which artists we want to lift up and which voices and experiences that are not being not being told, right. A couple of examples of that would be, you know, working with, working with Shaka King, who's the director of who's the director of Jews, the Black Messiah. And that was one example of, of, you know, of just really these great young artists that are starting to make a splash. And also, trying to upload voices like with the film Roma, and being able to tell a family story from from the lens of a domestic worker who by the way, because of that film we're also able to to use that film as a way to advocate for domestic workers rights in perhaps it did pass the equivalent of a social security law that that gave gave more benefits to domestic workers in Mexico so that was really cool to see. And I think, you know, for us internally, as a part of our journey, we've been very very, we've just been trying to really build the right infrastructure for how we hold ourselves accountable for our diversity belonging and inclusion journey. And that also involves data and involves bringing in expertise. It involves trying to be consistent in our training, consistent in how we also embed a lot of our, a lot of our diversity and belonging inclusion goals into our operations. And this is still, this is still a muscle that we're that we're developing. And we're learning a lot from from doing things well and doing things not as well. And so I think it's always great to hear from from other other other companies and other organizations to hear how you guys have been, and been working through that too but just to again sort to echo my point earlier which is, it really begins. It really begins with with with us. It really begins with our team. It begins to who we hire begins and how we incentivize our work how we set goals, and eventually, I think from from there by changing from the inside out, our outside perspective in the films that we that we will hopefully give people a broader or at least give broader audiences some more empathy and understanding of a different person's perspective that they may not have heard or experienced in their lives. Such an important point Jim because the reshaping of an internal organization, everything from your staff to your partners and vendors to the operational policies you have is, you know, it may not be on the surface visible to your audiences but can play these really valuable parts in in how your story gets told of any organization and I just think about the million decisions that anyone makes whether you're a fundraiser or you know a marketing professional, you know if you're writing that email, you are writing copy choosing language picking graphics you're choosing, you know even what platforms to test your email on and you know how mobile friendly is it all of these things that you know any one of those steps we all have our internal biases and so if our teams do not reflect you know the sort of stories we're trying to tell or the audiences we're trying to reach it can have you know a certain outsized impact on on the efficacy of that. One of the things that I also think is important is, you know, I think, as people asked me this question of how do I diversify my audience, something that didn't sit super well with me as I felt like there was this kind of unspoken tactical goal of like, we want the visible kind of diversity, you know we're all talking about racial equity we want to reach, you know, more kind of people of color and communities of color. That's not the only kind of diversity and I think we all know that sort of an intersectional approach to diversity is the most impactful one. And so I'm curious from from the panelists, you know what other ways are you trying to kind of expand your communications practices or your audiences in terms of, you know, different communities different identities, you know different practices you've put in place. I can get started. For us, you know, it's diversity in all its dimensions right, whether we're talking about the extent to which someone just was disabled can come to your website and still have a pretty positive experience. Whether you're talking LGBTQIA plus communities, whether you're talking diverse socioeconomic groups, typically in international development. People just assume it's about benefiting people in low to middle income countries and not necessarily folks in higher income countries. And we do know that there's room for challenging those assumptions right, because you know the world's framework for achieving a better feature for all by 2030, which 195 countries agree to write isn't just for the world's poorest, you know, it's for the kid urban area as well. It is for an elderly person in a rural area here in the United States of America. And so just, you know, really thinking about diversity in all its forms, not necessarily just to say hey we're diverse and and we're listening to each other on trend, but really to ensure that those people who actually stand to gain more from efforts to make our planet a more sustainable place, our front and center, but also are benefiting and driving as a result of our communications I think sometimes we often forget that that is one of the aspects we ought to be exploring as well particularly in international affairs and global development where there's still a lot of work to be done. And in terms of other types of diversity similar to suanne we're thinking a lot about accessibility, I guess, practically thinking about our events how to make those more accessible. We just did a refresh of our website with some some increased accessibility measures built into that. I think, yeah, also echoing some of the earlier comments I think it starts with this who's representing your organization, you know and creating an environment where people can live authentically and bring their full selves to work and I think that comes through when you're a hiring manager, you know when you're writing a job description, if you can sort of have some indicators in that text about, you know, the fact that you're actively proactively trying to create an inclusive and welcoming work environment for people. You know I think that goes a long way to communicating with potential candidates, and really enticing them, you know to come and work for your company. So I think, yeah, a lot of it really comes back to being that representation you know hiring people having people at the senior levels that are spokespeople and that represent your organization and letting people see that they are reflected within that organization. I would agree with everything that both Kate and Sue Ann said with the addition that one thing that we started to try to do is to embed, you know, more consistent cycles for feedback internally. And so, again going to the point of trying to develop authentic diversity. It's also really making sure that we are listening to people and really listening to members of our team and training ourselves to, yeah to listen more and talk less and to make sure that that's embedded in our systems and our operations. I like that that's such a simple thing to do is just like have more people review it. That's great. And we did get a question from Lauren in the chat that I wanted to raise. And I think it's an important one because you know for many of us in this sort of nonprofit social sector it's not uncommon to be at an organization that is disproportionately white, whereas the work we do is reflective of or has impact on communities of color. And so Lauren is asking, how do you incorporate standards or expectations to get permission to tell the stories of your constituents and compensate them for their stories and their time. Lauren you're not the only person someone asked me this exact question in a, you know, informal dialogue a week or so ago and where we were talking about the distinction between like having legal permission to do it right if you're getting consent forms or have all of the check boxes and people register for your events about recordings and things versus truly engaging people, you know, in a fair way that recognizes those tricky power dynamics so maybe folks on the panel have some thoughts on that. Yeah actually I'd love to take that stab at that because I think that's a really really important question. And this really goes back to how do you, how do you talk to communities and how do you, how do you really kind of lift up communities in the most authentic way, in a way that seems truly relational rather than transactional truly long term versus, versus for that activation. And I don't have a, I'm not going to share it like any sort of like, to emphasize formula, but I think it still goes back to the point that you really got to listen to that community, and you really got to develop a strong relationship with that community, develop a strong community before you can really feel, you know, feel like you are telling their stories authentically without again seeming like you're very transactional so just one example one thing we're going through right now. We actually had a film of documentary that recently was that made a big splash at Sundance and eventually got is now we're not working with the Obama Foundation, sorry the Obama's and also Netflix to really present this film it's called Descendant and it's about the descendants of the last slave ship to come back to the United States. It's a community in Alabama, you know, in a place called Africa town, and there's some celebrities like one celebrity quest love whose family is actually a descendant of this community which is really interesting but anyway, I think the point is we're trying to figure out how to best work with them. How do we best tell their stories, should we tell their stories beyond what's being shown in the film. And I think there's a really strong sense of recognizing that just by taking up their time, just by having a series of conversations. Is a trade off to that because they themselves in their community they are, they are, they have their own needs they have their own challenges. And so it's really important to recognize that even when you think you are trying to do good within a community, you still have to sit back and say okay well is my action downstream causing greater harm. And so I just really encourage everyone to spend time listening to spend time really letting them lead you because there are implications for for for our enthusiasm and our ambitions to really tell their stories. Yes, to everything Jim said, but I also want to underscore the point of representation here, who's approaching the community. You're a class right so 100% if the person doing the approaching and reaching out looks like that community. You've already made a giant leap to rebuilding the trust that you need and I think that, you know, we've all talked about representation all in this meeting. But that's where I think that's a practical example of where it can make such a difference, because you know that that will walk her ball in terms of building trust building connection. And then I think there's a point here about getting permission, you know, one thing that we recognize content forums are complicated, they're cumbersome, they're intimidating. Good enough job at translating and distilling that in a way that when a person lifts a pen to sign that line, they're assured that this is a document they can trust and that they understand the implications of it so I just wanted to share that as one learning that we've had recently and we're still even you know after having reworked the content forums late last year we're still not happy with them. I'm going to give it another crack to ensure that this form can be widely embraced received whether we are here in the United States or out in the field on a mission in another country with people with varying levels of literacy and English speaking and accessibility so also just want to make that point that there is scope for thinking more deeply about the actual tools that we use in communities who are typically not trusting a folks who show the cameras and no pads and other instruments. But that's such a good point it's not just, you know, getting the sort of approval but it's making that accessible, and then to Jim's point, making it one piece of an ongoing relationship, right, that those are things that can feel really transactional. Even if we have the best of intentions to have someone share their story or participate in research whatever the case may be. Deborah actually asked a question in the chat that was someplace I wanted to go next which is, you know, talking about how a lot of this these ideas scale up and down for different kinds of organizations and I've actually been jotting down as you all chat like there's lots of interesting tactical ideas here that like you know people are in smaller organizations. You know, then, then some of the ones you all represent. How can they kind of implement some of these things whether it's creating sort of the language guidelines for your comms team or adding an extra feedback cycles or, you know, having passed the mic initiatives those sorts of things. So I asked a question that's kind of the flip side of that which is, you know, part of her role in addition to getting messaging out to new and diverse audiences is also to position their organization which is maybe a smaller organization as a sort of well respected and so how do you kind of merge these two approaches one reaching new people but also making sure it's supportive of your brand it's helping you scale and expand kind of the general impact of your brand messaging. Kate do you want to go. Sure I can have been so. I think it goes back to the discussion about values that came up earlier, you know and really having clear organizational values, you know for us a lot of it is about independence and transparency and so no matter what our communications are, no matter where it is if it's doing more locally in the community around Washington DC or if it's a big national media campaign, you know those values really, really guide and shape that effort, but I think. Yeah, I think it also just goes back to just some of the, the core aspects of strategic communications planning and just, you know, no matter what that interaction is being thoughtful about who your audience is what your ultimate goal is, you know what, what is the goal that's going to resonate the most with them. And how are you going to know whether or not you were successful so I think just applying the sort of for strategic communications sort of guidelines and questions can help, you know, inform an effort of whatever scale. So when did you want to tag on to that or you were just passing the mic. Fine I was passing the mic. If anyone else has questions to pose I want to make sure we leave time for questions from the audience. And, you know you're welcome to type them in the chat or if you want to sort of raise your hand and join us on the discussion you're welcome to do that as well. Well, folks are potentially thinking of the last question. And, you know, one of the things that I really enjoyed about some of the answers you all gave is that this needs to be an ongoing relationship with the communities you're reaching it needs to be reflected in your internal kind of ways that you work. So if anyone had interesting examples of kind of internal shifts that you've made to your practices, or things that you've done as a team to sort of, you know, not necessarily change your communications and outreach practices but how has your teams approach shifted in the last couple years. I'll share a bit on that. Definitely, you know, belonging is important right and I think Jim also made the point earlier that you don't just want to reach out for the activation and then sort of move on. For me, just creating a robust directory of everyone we come into contact with their issue, their passions their interests, their locations, their experiences. And that's really a strength because maybe the, you know, the woman who came to the website and shared her story about the fight for gender equality. Now becomes a panelist at an international event where she can also share stories and that's one of the things that I enjoy about UN Foundation is that we help convene people with diverse perspectives from diverse backgrounds and for me that's been a strength of ours and orienting to keep the conversation going and to keep the representation going and also to invite suggestions on who else they think might be powerful voices in the conversation. That's really been helpful to us and I think is going to be something that's going to set us up well to not just build those relationships but maintain them and have it be less one way and more two way in the future. And this is less on my team but more throughout urban and similar to what Sudan was saying, we're kind of rethinking when we have a cohort of researchers who are kind of rethinking the relationship between researchers and the research. And so they are driving a methodology called community engaged methods or community based participatory research where, you know, instead of starting out with the research question and the whole the whole study kind of pre baked. We engage community members from day one on, you know, what are the questions that are most important to them to have answered what's going to actually benefit them, you know, and help their community instead of just something getting written up in a study that they never get to see. And so it really is a partnership, it really aims to kind of share the balance of power between the researchers and the community partners. And I think ultimately you know it leads to much better data right because you're just getting it sourced directly from from the people who are at the heart of the study. And then a core aspect of it too is the dissemination phase so bringing the data back to the community when the study is done, communicating it and accessible and relevant ways. And that's a very good point about, you know, having long term relationships, staying, staying there, you know, not just dipping out once the study is done and the funding runs out but really staying there for the long term to apply the insights from that data and stay in that long term partnership with community members. That's a very good point and Amanda asked a question in the chat and I know Jim if you want to tackle this general internal question but maybe with this flavor of how do you build alignment. And so Amanda is kind of a one person comms team and needing to get alignment and buy in from other departments and folks in their organization and so maybe you can talk a little bit about how your team has built alignment on all of your efforts around the Yeah, I think that's a great question I think something like something like diversity belonging inclusion I think has to be, it has to start from the top. It has to has to be a an organizational wide initiative that has to end there needs to be consistency in terms of how we are, how we are training people, how we're talking about a lot of these issues, how we use the lens of diversity belonging when we are talking about the victories that we have as an organization when we're talking about the challenges. How do we really maintain that level of accountability. And it's hard, right, it's hard because there are so many different types of things that we can potentially be implementing but it really just comes down to how you build a culture and a consistency and being able to talk about and to train people in a lot of these these areas. And so there's really the, I think the biggest challenges is, is how do you make that bridge between, you know, the, the training and the practice because oftentimes of course, you know, realize situations are extremely complicated and extremely nuanced. So I think for us it's it's making sure that we consistently have the ability to develop skills and then consistently being able to to apply those skills when there are situations that happen. And oftentimes you know we everyone I'm sure all of you are running 100 miles an hour and trying to reach your goals and trying to do great work. And I think it's important after your initiatives after your activations after your, after you make a statement world to take a step back and and to look in and see okay well how was this done. And how did it get received. And what do we hear from the people that we're trying to reach in terms of our message. So I really think it's important to, you know that it's really kind of developing this entire feedback loop, taking time to understand it and taking time to say okay well, did we really approach this from a lens of really uplifting this community, or will be trying to do something that was a lot more for lack of their term transactional. And if it is okay it's just but it's I think it's important to just take a step back and say okay did we really will be really doing this through the lens of everything that we've learned and are trying to progress in our diversity and belonging inclusion journey. Or do we do we do it in a way that that really kind of brought back old habits, and do we want to change that. So, I think it's important always to take a step back and always be able to look and say okay well, you know what can we do differently and what can we do better. I just want to point Jim that it's not just about talking about your ideals and what you want to do with examining how it played out and in fact talking about the challenges because I think, you know, hopefully most of the people on this call and in your organizations kind of all agree on the foundational like sure we want to be more inclusive. But it's much harder to examine like where have we missed stepped. And I think making space for that conversation is really wonderful. It's amazing that we're going to start hitting the top of the hour soon I think I've got one more maybe like rapid fire round robin for folks that came in the chat, someone was asking about what resources you like to sort of get ideas or keep up with things that are going on in the DEI space or even kind of inclusive comms in general. And while you all are thinking about that I'll share the one that I like. You know, there's a organization or a newsletter called better allies, and that is really wonderful. And part of what I like about it is it's really tactical. You know, I also being in leadership here at PTKO or a fairly small organization and so, you know, very different from the Urban Institute or the UN Foundation or even participant media, but getting those really specific ideas of, here's something we can do to change the way we communicate or here's something we can do to change the way our team interacts or an operational policy. They send you five ideas every week in your email. You know, and some of it is just about our one on one interactions with our colleagues so that's one that I love I dropped a link in the chat. But let's run through Sue Ann I don't know if you've got one that came to mind for you. I'm looking for a link to drop in the chat so just stand by for that actually a really helpful library of like language and terms to use so I'm going to send that shortly. Great. Kate or Jim is there one that comes up. Yeah, I have to give a shout out to the communications network which has really leaned into this topic in the last couple of years. So they give amazing webinars they have some toolkits on their website I can drop the link in as well. And then I'm also very lucky to work at a place that is doing a lot of work on racial equity. And so, you know, folks want to check out our website as well we've got a lot of great resources and great issues. I'll say for me personally, you know I see there I think there are a lot of publications that started to embrace this conversation more. I'll say one thing from a very tactical level. I love the Harvard Business Reviews kind of executive. They do this like daily executive email that oftentimes, you know, they actually do have some really interesting, you know, small recommendations for how to continue to live through to operate and lead through a lens of diversity, belonging and inclusion so if you get a chance to sign up for it's really it's it's helpful. And a lot of times these little topics oftentimes are very relevant to my daily work and I love seeing it pop up every day in my inbox. Great. So you want to say something about the one that you shared in the chat. Yeah, I think just generally give this site a world because they offer free consultations as well on getting your language up to speed they offer workshops and there's also really helpful guide like if there's a term that you're wrestling with you're not sure if that's the appropriate just look it up and they the guidance is really really robust and I love that it's also globally minded and not just, you know, focus on one particular country or geography. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much and we will try to grab those links and maybe put them in our follow up email as well. And so folks have access to them. I want to thank everyone for joining us today I think we got to most of the questions that came through in the chat but this has been a really wonderful dialogue and Sue and Kate and Jim. Thank you so much for sharing your ideas and inspiration from what you and your teams are doing. For the folks that joined us today thank you again for giving us your time. We will be sharing a recording of this via email so please feel free to pass it on to your friends and colleagues. And please do stay engaged with us we've got kind of a steady stream of you know free thought leadership and content out there so a lot of our old webinars are hosted on our website. And there's a podcast that Tony our CEO hosts which you can find on Spotify, our blog and if you're not signed up for the email newsletter to get those please do so on our website. But I really appreciated everyone joining us today will also be pinging you a survey in the follow up email. And I would actually and Mickey is just stuck it in the chat as well. So please encourage you to send your feedback we really appreciate hearing from everyone whether these conversations were useful to you. And if you've got ideas for another discussion or panel we ought to have and you'd like to join us for it. And please send it along we'd love to hear from you.