Authentic Multiculturalism

From Tokenism to Belonging: What I've Learned About Authentic Multiculturalism in Non-Profits

Let me be honest with you about something that took me a long time to articulate clearly.

I've seen the shift in the non-profit sector in recent years to be more inclusive and diverse; but I must admit, it almost always rubs me the wrong way.  My discomfort comes from the behaviours that organizations take on while neglecting a sincere desire to include those they serve.  The change isn't structural and it's therefore not real.  I'm not trying to be negative about this - afterall, change has to start somewhere and I believe that there are folks honestly trying.  So I wrote this, and created a short tool, for those of you who want to make a lasting change.  I'm talking one that stretches you a bit so that you can create space for others without removing yourself and who you are from the equasion.  I hope this helps.

The Word Nobody Wants Applied to Them

Tokenism. It's one of those words that makes leaders defensive the moment they hear it. Nobody thinks they're doing it. Nobody sets out to do it. And yet it's everywhere in the non-profit sector — including, if we're honest, in organizations led by people who genuinely, deeply care about inclusion.

Here's what I've noticed it actually looks like, because it's rarely the obvious stuff:

It's the staff member from an underrepresented background who is brilliant at their job, but somehow keeps getting asked to review the equity policy, speak at the cultural awareness panel, and represent the organization at the community consultation. Not because anyone decided to do that to them. Just because it kept happening, and nobody stopped to notice.

It's the board that celebrates its diversity while making every major decision exactly the way it always has. The strategic plan with the inclusion commitment buried on page four that never gets mentioned again. The organization that posts the photos from the multicultural staff lunch and calls it progress.

I've seen this. I've been part of organizations where this was happening. And the hardest part is that the people leading those organisations weren't bad people. They were good people with incomplete structures - and I want to acknowledge that they had to start somewhere.

What the Research Actually Says

The sociologist Rosabeth Moss Kanter mapped this out in a way that I find genuinely useful. She identified four types of groups based on their representation ratios, and the differences between them aren't just numerical — they shape the entire lived experience of the people inside them.

In a skewed group — where minority members make up around 15% or fewer — those individuals become tokens. They stand out. They get watched. They get assigned, consciously or not, the job of representing their whole community. The dominant culture stays exactly as it is.

Move toward 35% and you're in what she calls a tilted group. Things start to shift. Alliances form. People begin to see each other more clearly. Early cultural change becomes possible. Get to 40-50% and you're approaching genuine integration — where people are seen as individuals, roles are based on actual competence, and the culture of the organization itself evolves.

Most non-profits, in my experience, believe they are further along that spectrum than they actually are. I've believed that about organizations I was part of. It's a humbling thing to sit with.

The Five Things That Actually Separate Tokenism from Belonging

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I keep coming back to five areas where the gap between performing inclusion and practicing it shows up most clearly.

The first is leadership. Not just who's in the room, but who's at the table where decisions actually get made. If your board and senior team don't reflect the communities you serve, that gap doesn't stay contained — it shapes everything downstream. Strategy. Culture. Who gets heard.  I want to take a moment and stress a personal value here: we need to train people into leadership roles.  I'm not talking about a free-for-all in decision making, I'm talking intentional steps to develop leaders who look, think, and act a little differently from us.  This is fundamentally an exchange: young leaders learn about how to make good decisions, and experienced leaders keep an open mind to how else they can make good decisions.

The second is how staff actually experience the organization. Are people from underrepresented backgrounds valued for what they bring as individuals? Or are they carrying the invisible extra weight of having to represent their whole community every time a relevant topic comes up? That weight is real, and it can be exhausting, and most organisations don't even know they're imposing it.  It's about finding the balance between asking existing staff for their insight, while growing in your own knowledge so that they don't stay the role of anthropologist forever.

The third is culture — and this is the one I find most revealing. Has your culture actually changed? Or have your diverse staff members quietly learned to assimilate into the norms that were already there? You can tell a lot about an organization by asking: whose communication style is treated as the default? Whose way of running a meeting is considered "professional"? Whose humour makes it into the group chat?

The fourth is accountability. I've sat in enough strategic planning sessions to know that good intentions without infrastructure go nowhere. If inclusion isn't attached to measurable goals, formal reporting, and actual consequences — it stays aspirational. And aspirational doesn't change anything.

The fifth, and for non-profits I think the most important, is community voice. Not consultation. Voice. There's a massive difference between asking the communities you serve what they think and actually giving them ongoing influence over what you do. One is a process. The other is a power shift.

The Question I Keep Coming Back To

Here's the thing I've had to sit with personally: it's much easier to assess other organizations than it is to honestly assess the one you're leading.

I've been in leadership roles where I thought we were doing well. I've been on boards where I was proud of what we'd built. And I've also, in hindsight, seen places where we were performing inclusion more than we were practicing it — where the structures hadn't actually caught up to the values we said we held.

That gap — between who we say we are and how we actually function for the people inside our organizations — is the most important thing a non-profit leader can look at honestly. Not defensively. Not with the goal of protecting the organization's reputation. But with genuine curiosity and a real willingness to change what needs changing.

Because the communities we serve deserve more than good intentions. They deserve organizations that have done the structural work to make belonging real.

A Place to Start

I put together a short self-assessment to help non-profit leaders begin that honest reflection. It covers the five areas above — leadership, staff experience, culture, accountability, and community voice. It takes about five minutes, it's not a test, and nothing gets shared publicly. It's just a tool for seeing more clearly.

If you lead a non-profit, sit on a board, or work in the inclusion space, I'd encourage you to give it a try. Not because it has all the answers — it doesn't. But because the gap between tokenism and belonging is closeable. It just requires the courage to look at it honestly first.

👇 [Take the self-assessment here]

And if something in here resonated — or if you've seen this play out differently in your own organization — I'd genuinely love to hear about it in the comments.