Race Equity in Volunteerism Work: Is Anything Changing?

For the past five years, the Minnesota Alliance for Volunteer Advancement (MAVA) has conducted research and education on race equity in volunteerism. Through funding from the Minneapolis Foundation, MAVA was able to convene the necessary voices – over 40 community members and volunteers who identify as BIPOC – to learn more about systemic inequities in volunteer engagement and imagine new systems of volunteerism. In this Engage feature, MAVA Executive Director Karmit Bulman reviews the results of eight listening sessions that explored race equity in volunteerism. As Bulman writes, “Through our research, we’ve learned that making small tweaks to problematic systems will not solve the issue of structural racism in volunteerism. Instead, we need to work with Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities to co-create new systems that are rooted in equity.”