After over a decade of working with nonprofits of all sizes and mission areas, we’ve seen a clear pattern: organizations that commit to the hard work of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), are transparent about their challenges, and hold themselves accountable for making improvements and systemizing DEI practices consistently outperform nonprofits that don’t. Because strong DEI practices require strong leaders and strong systems, those who succeed in this area shine across metrics of internal and external success.
This week we are offering a case study from one of our longstanding clients, Lawyers Clearinghouse, on how this successful Boston-based nonprofit integrated DEI practices, systems, and culture into their organization, and how this commitment has helped strengthen the organization and drive fundraising success.
—
In late 2024, in the months prior to the new presidential administration, Lawyers Clearinghouse, a Boston-based nonprofit providing free legal services to low-income people and nonprofits, was discussing changing staff member Lex Brown’s title from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Coordinator to Culture and Systems Manager.
“Lex’s work had evolved into really working with our systems, our staff culture, our board culture, and client culture,” explains Executive Director Susan Gedrick. Lex reflects that the timing, “perfectly aligned with the moment when everyone was changing their titles,” referring to the almost immediate assault on DEI funding and policies from the Oval Office that sent nonprofits into a panic over newly established DEI positions, programming, and language, “and I remember we were like ‘well maybe we shouldn’t change it right now.’” They both laugh. They changed Lex’s title anyway. It was an acknowledgment that Lex’s work was now a part of who the Clearinghouse was.
The word “intentional” comes up frequently when the small staff of Lawyers Clearinghouse discusses their organization’s journey to become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. This intentionality is what differentiates them from organizations that began or expanded DEI programming in 2020, with the swelling of the Black Lives Matter movement and when foundation funding for this work significantly increased, only to abandon that work when the political climate changed.
“For the legal services community in Boston, it was just the right thing to do, to be honest,” explains Susan. “I remember having some conversations about how our founding program [Nonprofit Assistance Program] is about advising nonprofits, and so we need to be a model nonprofit and have intentional DEI policies and procedures for both internal and external-facing programming.”
Lawyers Clearinghouse was founded in 1988 by the Boston and Massachusetts Bar Associations with a mission to improve the lives of people facing social and economic hardship by engaging the legal community in pro bono (volunteer) service to homeless and low-income clients and nonprofit organizations serving these same populations. They achieve this through three core programs: Legal Clinics for low-income and unhoused people; the Nonprofit Assistance Program, which provides workshops and coordinates volunteer attorneys with nonprofits needing legal assistance; and the Access to Justice Fellows Program, which pairs retired lawyers and judges with legal services offices and nonprofit organizations. When Page Consulting Group began working with the Clearinghouse at the end of 2020, they had a staff of four and an organizational budget of $460,000.
Building the Foundation
Many organizations will mention the struggle around “buy-in” and how reluctance from boards of directors inevitably derails DEI efforts. When asked about this kind of pushback, Susan recalls, “I don’t remember there being any.” Communications Director Hilary Vaught adds, “If anything, everyone was very ready to get into it and focus on it more.” It did help to have a champion in longtime board member Josephine A. McNeil, a pioneering Black attorney in Boston and an affordable housing advocate. She had always encouraged the Clearinghouse to diversify its board as well as honor a more diverse mix of people at the Clearinghouse’s Annual Meeting, an event that traditionally had functioned as the organization’s main fundraising event.
This persistence led to board diversification becoming a key part of the organization’s 2018 Strategic Plan. Shortly thereafter, in 2020, former Executive Director Maribeth Perry recruited current Board President Tonysha Taylor, an accomplished DEI and engagement professional. Tonysha wasted no time. By the end of 2020, a DEI Committee with eight board and staff members was up and running. “It came together pretty naturally,” recalls Hilary, “and we were intentional about making sure there was someone from each board committee on the DEI Committee. They would then bring our discussions back to their other committees.” Over the next year, the Committee met monthly and immersed itself in DEI learning while examining the Clearinghouse’s programming and governance through this new lens.
In 2021, the organization recruited two women of color to the board and amended its bylaws to explicitly cement the organization’s DEI commitment. Most importantly, they planned to hire the Clearinghouse’s first-ever DEI Fellow at the start of 2022, a position that Lex Brown tackled so successfully that it was transitioned into a permanent position–DEI Coordinator–before the year ended.
Defining Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
The main goal of the fellowship had been to update and implement the Clearinghouse’s Language Access Plan (a blueprint for how an organization will provide services to people with limited English proficiency and/or disabilities). But after speaking with the DEI Committee, Lex understood that she needed to ensure everyone at the Clearinghouse was on the same page. “I surveyed every person on the board and every person on the staff to understand when we’re saying ‘diversity, equity, inclusion,’ what does that mean to people?” The responses varied widely. “But it helped people understand that there’s not one thing that means DEI. We have to figure out what it means at the Clearinghouse.”
Lex spent her first few months creating alignment across staff and board members so that when the more tangible work began, everyone understood why and felt included. This was a critical commitment on which the Clearinghouse’s new culture was built.
The Power of Data
Collecting data became another cornerstone of the Clearinghouse’s DEI work. “My biggest mission was…making sure our organization demographics align with what we’re seeing in the larger Boston community. Because sometimes the idea is ‘let’s make us more diverse,’ but in comparison to what was my question?” Lex reviewed the client demographic data already being gathered for the Legal Clinics, but discovered that the Nonprofit Assistance Program was not collecting any demographic data. Lex worked with the Program Manager to integrate demographic and service area questions into the client intake process. What began as information-gathering for DEI efforts ultimately informed program planning and bolstered the organization’s outcomes.
Data also clarified the need for the Language Access Plan. “I had to sell language access a little bit…” Lex chuckles, describing some hesitancy from the board around the resources needed to implement it. “At that time, specifically around DEI work, people were really committed to the idea of racial justice. And for me, those two things can’t be separated, especially in a city like Boston, where there are so many immigrants and so many different languages.” More than one-third of Boston residents (37%) speak another language at home, and 16% of residents have language access needs. The statistics supported the case for translating Clearinghouse forms and information into Mandarin and Haitian Creole, in addition to Spanish and three other languages. “I wanted to make sure we had a language access plan that encapsulated Boston’s diversity,” Lex concludes.
This data-driven approach was extended to measuring effectiveness. When the Clearinghouse implemented new internal procedures, like creating an official staff onboarding process to improve knowledge transfer, Lex followed up with surveys to gauge their effectiveness. This ensured transparency around organizational decision-making and a greater sense of inclusion.
Integrating, Not Adding
Even something as simple as integrating demographic questions into the Nonprofit Assistance Program intake form shows how DEI can be built into processes rather than being segmented from normal operations. Every nonprofit looking for legal assistance from the Clearinghouse fills out this form, and by collecting that new information, the organization was “taking an integrative and not an additive approach” to DEI. This philosophy led to a bold decision in 2023: the Clearinghouse dissolved the DEI Committee. “At the May 2023 Board Meeting, I outlined how DEI should move into the Governance Committee and how the Governance Committee should rewrite their purpose statement to really center DEI,” explains Lex. DEI activities were advancing enough that they often required the input of the Governance Committee, and moving DEI into the center of the organization’s decision-making body felt necessary. “A lot of [DEI], if not all of it, is governance matters. How are we running our board? How are we bringing people in? How are we making people feel? How are we making sure people are up to date?” explains Lex. “And a question that was coming up around that time was how to make sure everyone was involved in our DEI work.” The DEI Committee’s absorption into the Governance Committee ensured that DEI principles were integrated into the highest level of the organization, structurally mitigating the potential for sidelining or erasure in the future.
This same year, more formal goal-setting was introduced into every committee. Committees now decide on goals in October, report them out at the November board meeting, and have mid-year check-ins in February. For example, each committee identified gaps and needs in terms of skillsets, experience, etc. within their committee memberships, and working with the Governance Committee, successfully recruited new board members to fill all identified gaps. The transparency and accountability built into the goal-setting exercise have led committees to identify simple, practical, and actionable goals that fundamentally include DEI. Additionally, the learning around DEI and DEI efforts to date have created an environment where people feel heard and empowered. “It’s almost ironic that dissolving our DEI Committee was one of the major steps we made towards making sure it wasn’t a one-time initiative and was instead embedded in our organizational culture.”
Nonprofit staff often complain about DEI because it commonly sits outside normal operations and programming–it’s extra work, which is the last thing any nonprofit employee needs. For example, implementing a Language Access Plan for some organizations would have meant an entirely new set of activities for staff on top of their regular responsibilities. At the Clearinghouse, Hilary, as the Communications Director, would be responsible for implementing the new Language Access Plan. Hilary and Lex began working together closely to figure out how to streamline Hilary’s regular communications-related tasks and how language access activities would fit into them. This included investing time in training the program managers on relevant components of language access, enabling them to address their clients’ language access needs in real time at clinics and provide guidance to volunteer attorneys to do the same. In describing the integration, Lex adds, “The Language Access Plan clarified and fortified existing structures, rather than inventing new ones.” Investing the time and energy up front improved a system for Communications that allowed Hilary to oversee the Language Access Plan without being responsible for execution, which gave her the time and space for all her responsibilities. The Clearinghouse recognized that when DEI is integrated into workflows rather than simply layered on top, it transforms from a perceived burden into a catalyst for system improvement.
Systems & Culture
As DEI was woven into the Clearinghouse’s operations, the organization formalized policies, procedures, and systems to create clarity and transparency. One example of this was the Pay Equity Study undertaken in 2024. “We had for years sort of pieced together bonuses and raises without any real plan,” explains Susan. “I wanted to make sure that we had our current staff paid well, had that documented, and could move that forward as a procedure before hiring more people.” The organization had been setting aside a small line item ($10,000) in their annual budget starting in 2022 for special DEI projects such as this one. When the study concluded, the Clearinghouse finalized a Compensation Practices Guide, which provided the data for them to align current salaries with the sector, ensure transparency for existing staff, and to be forthcoming about salaries when hiring new employees.
The Pay Equity Study was an important step in establishing fairness and transparency as a foundation of the Clearinghouse’s human resources system. The creation of systems based on clear procedures and practices allows for DEI to be embedded into all operations. Put differently, the creation of clear systems is itself a DEI practice because systems foster transparency and remove bias. “If your systems can’t be learned by people of different backgrounds, you can’t really have people of different backgrounds in your organization,” Lex points out. And if you have no systems in place or your systems were not built with DEI in mind, an organization becomes confusing, exclusive, and fundamentally inaccessible to new employees and board members.
“A lot of my work is how to make sure the system is there to support the culture–you can’t divorce those two things,” Lex explains. Her data-driven, integrative approach has helped align the Clearinghouse’s staff and board, and has created a workplace where people feel respected and involved. The organization has also strengthened its culture through specific exercises, such as the CliftonStrengths Assessment, a tool that helps individuals assess their top strengths. After completing the assessment, Clearinghouse staff members’ differences became tangible, and the sources of tension were easily identified. “It’s easy to have conflict, but it’s hard to see how different values being prioritized are leading to this conflict,” explains Lex. “That was one of the more fruitful conversations we had about staff culture–where our different strengths were and why we are sometimes not necessarily communicating in a way that resonates based on what our strengths are.”
Moving Forward
Susan remains determined. “It’s very important to me to emphasize that we’re moving forward and strengthening our DEI work, we’re not backing away from it. And that’s what we advise all of our nonprofits to do. Assess and move forward as best you can.” In 2025, the Clearinghouse’s equitably paid staff had grown to six, and they managed 1,005 volunteers who provided volunteer legal services worth $15.6 million to 312 people and 216 nonprofit organizations. Their budget has nearly doubled since 2020 to $900,000. The 22-member board boasts four individuals who identify as LGBTQ+, 13 women, six individuals who identify as BIPOC, and two members who are staff at Clearinghouse partner homeless shelters.
The Clearinghouse’s DEI journey offers an encouraging example for organizations seeking meaningful and sustainable change. By grounding their work in data, embedding DEI into governance and program design rather than treating it as an add-on, and building systems that inherently support equity and inclusion, they have created a model that can withstand external pressures that have put many organizations’ DEI progress in jeopardy. Their growth in staff, budget, and impact demonstrates that investing in DEI–in addition to being the right thing to do–actually strengthens real organizational capacity and effectiveness. For nonprofits navigating an uncertain landscape, the Clearinghouse’s story proves that intentionality, patience, and integration can build something that lasts.
A huge thank you to the following Lawyers Clearinghouse staff: Lex Brown, Culture and Systems Manager; Hilary Vaught, Communications Director; and Susan Gedrick, Executive Director.