As your leaders consider ways to draw on the Leadership by Example (LBE) Initiative's resources to strengthen your foundation's diversity, inclusion, and equity practices, it will be helpful to briefly consider the initiative's change framework and strategies. The work of implementing organizational change can be a challenging process, particularly when that objective is to undo an embedded and contested social dilemma like inequality in a diverse community. The fact that no two organizational cultures are completely alike--in terms of planning, decision-making practices, leadership, management, and implementation-complicates the task of developing viable change strategies, tools, and resources community foundation leaders can draw on to strengthen their internal diversity and equity practices. To account for this strategic challenge, California Tomorrow developed an array of tools and resources that foundation leadership teams could draw on and customize to respond to their objectives in regard to diversity and equity. These resources were designed to help each team identify strategic issues that could be addressed through each foundation's own assessment, planning, learning, management, and leadership approaches.

Drawing heavily on organizational planning approaches, the LBE change strategies and tools are designed support a leadership team's efforts to engage their foundations in a strategic alignment process. This strategic alignment process relies heavily on data and values-driven dialogue as a tool to help each team lead their peers in the collective inquiry needed to determine priorities for change (inside and outside the foundation). Through collective inquiry the foundation leaders work to clarify the values and principles they hold most dear and choose the change strategies needed to align their foundations around the high stakes diversity and equity concerns that are most urgent in the communities they serve. Although the ordering of steps can vary, the basic strategies and steps of the LBE change process are:

• Engaging in organizational dialogue and reflection (on diversity and equity);
• Developing and supporting a core leadership group in leading internal organizational change;
• Collecting and assessing data on internal and external diversity and equity issues and practices;
• Clarifying and affirming organizational values and principles about diversity and equity;
• Planning and acting on becoming a more inclusive and equitable foundation;
• Setting goals and targets for becoming a more inclusive and equitable foundation;
• Supporting personal, professional, and organizational learning;
• Drawing upon technical assistance and coaching (expert, external, and peer);
• Allocating the time and resources needed to support change;
• Seeking input, honest feedback, and support from community and civic leaders;
• Connecting with and supporting peers in organizations who are also leading change;
• Celebrating and sharing stories of success with community and civic partners; and
• Assuming leadership roles on diversity and equity in the community the foundation serves.

At California Tomorrow we refer to this dialogue based learning, assessment, planning, and leadership development process as Cycles of Inquiry. Through our years of facilitating organizational change in a wide range of organizations and institutions we have learned that organizations realize deeper and more sustainable outcomes when the Cycles of Inquiry are repeated; and ultimately, when the basic elements become embedded in the organization's regular strategic planning, development, management, and evaluation. With this in mind, the strategies, tools, and resources developed for the LBE Initiative were intended to assist the four foundation teams in leading an initial strategic alignment process to embed an equity lens, values, and principles, and objectives into their foundation's organizational culture and practice.

Whether the leadership team chooses to focus on foundation-wide change or tailors work to one or two aspects of foundation practices (e.g., donor development or programming), early indicators of success for strategic alignment efforts like the LBE Initiative are:

• The foundation's staff and trustees are more comfortable and skilled at discussing issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity;
• Their diversity, inclusion, and equity discussions move from the periphery of foundation life to the center of the foundation's strategic development;
• Leadership responsibility and accountability for the change strategies are increasingly embedded in the everyday work and functions of the foundation;
• There are clear, achievable, and measurable outcomes for internal and external change strategies;
• There are adequate resources and supports to continue the alignment and deepening of their diversity, inclusion, and equity work; and
• A commitment is made to regular (periodic) cycles of reflection, learning, assessment, planning and change.

Strategic & Practical Issues:
Before moving on to look at the various tools and resources provided here, we suggest that you consider the following strategic and logistical matters. First, these tools were created for use in foundations, in which senior level leadership was already convinced that strengthening internal diversity and equity practices was of critical importance. The threshold criteria for involvement in the LBE Initiative was a commitment of each foundation's CEO/President to participate in leading change with a team that included at least one trustee and senior (or well respected) staff person. If your initial cadre of leaders does not already include similar commitment and involvement, it will be more difficult to use the tools provided to move a comprehensive internal change process. If you are unable to secure such involvement from the onset, you may decide to use one or two of the dialogue guides to raise awareness about important diversity and equity issues, as an interim strategy to secure the buy-in needed for an organization-wide effort.

A second important point to consider is that the initial piloting of many of these dialogue tools took place in a network setting, away from the pressures of daily foundation life. This meant that there was ample time to deeply dig into issues and to debrief many of the personal and strategic challenges that surfaced in the course of each session. The network setting also allowed facilitators to encourage greater candor in sessions that focused on deeper equity dilemmas. To account for the limitations associated with power issues in all organizations, facilitators intentionally created mixed teams (e.g., putting the president of one foundation together with the lead staff and trustees of other foundations). This was especially helpful when the topic of conversation was focused on thornier internal inclusion and equity dilemmas. As you make plans to move your own foundation's efforts forward, you will want to strategize about ways to ensure power dynamics in your foundation do not become a limiting factor in this change process. Toward this end, we suggest your team considers enlisting the services of an expert facilitator with extensive experience working on diversity and equity issues in organizations.

A final point, related to issues raised in the previous section, is the fact that although the LBE tools draw on fairly standard assessment and planning approaches, the topic of diversity and equity within an internal organizational setting is likely to raise a variety of emotions for those who participate in your various discussions and planning efforts. This is very natural and to be expected, given the historical and contemporary realities of dealing with race and other diversity dilemmas in the United States. As you move forward with this important work your team should take steps to account for this. The four foundations who participated in the LBE Initiative drew on a variety of training resources to introduce their leaders to a variety of basic diversity and equity concepts and to support the development of individual and group skills to participate in constructive dialogue. In this way, diversity training and/or coaching was viewed (and harnessed) as an input to the organizational change process rather than an outcome of the change process itself. We encourage your team to consider the training and technical assistance needs of your various stakeholders as your organizational change work moves through its various stages.

The Tools and Resources:
The resources shared in the LBE Toolkit primarily consist of dialogue, assessment, learning, and planning tools community foundation leaders can use to surface and respond to the diversity, inclusion, and equity issues their leaders believe are most urgent-inside and outside the foundation. The tools and resources are shared here in their working formats and organized according to cycles in the collective change process. Whenever possible, we have taken care to include copies of selected excerpts from other publications we drew on as background reading for the dialogue and exercises contained in the tools. Because each of these publications contain: research, concepts, and working examples that are so integral to the tools, we would encourage your team to secure copies of each. The publications are:

David A. Thomas and Robin J. Ely, Making Differences Matter: A New Paradigm for Managing Diversity, Harvard Business Review, 1996.

Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, Nguyen Louie, Benjamin Murdock, Elena Pell and Ted Scott Femenella, Walking the Walk: Principals for Building Community Capacity for Equity and Diversity, California Tomorrow, 2000.

David M. Schele with T. Williams and Janis Foster, Improving Race Relations and Undoing Racism Roles and Strategies for Community Foundations, Rainbow Research, Inc, 2001.

Angela Glover-Blackwell, Stewart Kwoh, and Manuel Pastor, Searching for the Uncommon Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America, W.W. Norton Company, 2002.

In addition to these resources, your team will also need to determine the best strategy for collecting demographic data about the region served by your foundation. We found that quantitative and qualitative data and studies tracking changes that have occurred, current realities, and projecting future trends are all essential for community and civic leaders committed to creating inclusive and equitable organizations and communities. In many cases the data and studies you will need may already be collected by different departments in your foundation. If not, we suggest that your team consult staff in your research or knowledge departments to determine the best source for you data needs.

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