This week I have mostly focused on rewriting the portions of Zora’s House’s employee handbook that we discussed in detail during last week’s Operations, Infrastructure, and Culture Board meeting. The main takeaway from this particular assignment has been that it is a lot more difficult than it seems to write an employee manual. As I was working on the sections regarding the organization’s employment policies and staff compensation, I found it difficult to figure out how to better word these sections so that the organization’s values and culture were reflected in those policies. For example, when you’re legally obligated to put in a statement about an organization being an equal opportunity employer, how do you contextualize that policy to illustrate how that statement is put into practice? For Zora’s House, not only is being an equal opportunity employer about not discriminating against anyone during the hiring process based on their identities (or at least not outwardly doing so), but it is about respecting individuals’ identities and their ways of being while working at the organization as well. That means celebrating everything that makes a person unique. 

In figuring out how to word the organization’s employment policies, I was also reminded of the concerns brought up in last week’s board meeting about how, even though Zora’s House is a space that attempts to counter white supremacy and systemic oppression in their goals and mission, there are still policies that Zora’s House legally has to abide by within these greater oppressive structures to exist as a recognized organization. Although someone on the board wrote a few sentences on this subject that will be included in the handbook, it’s hard to figure out how to frame this so that the organization’s work in countering oppressive systems isn’t diminished but at the same time acknowledging that they are working within these systems in order to be legally visible. 

I think these issues have pushed me to be more intentional about the language I use more generally, and also have made me think about the issues that organizations grounded in social justice work have to deal with. In looking towards the future, I think these are things all of us will have to wrestle with, especially if we decide to pursue a career in nonprofit work.