The Agenda Vol. 85 | Operationalizing Equity

Powered by the Impact Communications Institute

VOL. 85 | OPERATIONALIZING EQUITY IN STORYTELLING

Photo: Becky Bekks

There is no shortage of organizations that claim equity as a value. Far fewer can tell you what it looks like on a day-to-day basis. We’re taking a deep dive on the subject in this issue, spotlighting practical approaches and tools that can help infuse equity into daily routines and decision making.

Why now? Last issue, we named DEI retrenchment as one of the defining stories of 2025, a reminder of how fragile corporate values can be under political and economic pressure. That retrenchment hasn't reversed. What's changed is the conversation among practitioners: fewer of us are asking whether to hold the line on equity commitments, and more of us are asking what holding that line actually requires. Making a values statement is the first step. Creating a values system (the decisions, defaults, and tools that make equity load-bearing rather than decorative) is the work.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS COVERED IN THIS ISSUE

Photo: Tim Mossholder

SHIFTING DECISIONS TOWARDS EQUITY

Tessa Danelesko, ICI’s Co-Executive Director, recently put it plainly: “Operationalizing equity... looks less like a policy document and more like a series of small, deliberate decisions that accumulate into something meaningful.”

Here’s what some of those decisions could be:

Reject deficit framing. Every communications decision is a choice about whose story gets centred and how. Resisting the pull toward trauma as the hook, and building narratives around resilience, self-determination and joy instead isn't spin, it's accuracy.
Move at the pace of trust. "Nothing about us without us" only means something if you're willing to slow down for it. If a project timeline and a community's timeline don't match, that's a signal to pause, not push through.
Ask whose voice is driving the story. Who benefits from this narrative, and who decided it would be told this way? When the answer to both is the community itself, you're on the right track.
Ask: Is a decision actually serving the community, or is it serving existing comfort? Organizations that build this question into their workflow, and ask it repeatedly at multiple stages of a project, are the ones actually moving equity from commitment to practice.

WHAT CAN HELP: RESOURCES

New tool aims to harness the power of AI to combat internet hate against Indigenous people

A new tool called wâsikan kisewâtisiwin ("kind energy" in Cree) is designed to serve as a writing plug-in for your computer, similar to Grammarly. Intended to help general audiences understand their bias, it will flag any writing that may be biased against Indigenous people, provide an explanation and a suggestion for how to reword the sentence.

Prep-AI: Preparing policy-makers and educators for AI and inclusive digital transformation

The Prep-AI project aims to enhance the capacity of education leaders and decision-makers to steer digital transformation in ways that uphold fundamental rights, equity and sustainability and to support countries in operationalizing UNESCO’s normative and capacity-development tools.

LEARN FROM PEERS WITH ICI’S NEW CIRCLE COMMUNITY

Operationalizing equity isn't a solo practice, it's built in community, through the kind of peer exchange that turns a good idea into a shared standard. If this issue resonated, our new Circle community is where impact communicators trade the frameworks, tools, and hard-won lessons that don't make it into a mission statement. Join today and gain access to peer-to-peer spaces, and become a Pro Member for exclusive benefits like small group conversations with the field’s leading thinkers. Sign up here, and we will see you there.

RSVP: OUR NEXT IMPACT COUNCILS ARE AUG 20 & OCT 1

Coming up first, on August 20, is PR for people, not just brands: Building a career that means something, a collaboration with PR Girl Manifesto. The event will feature Michael Kaye, Director of Corporate Communications at Upstart, Kevin Wong, Chief Communications Officer at The Trevor Project and Samiyah Malik, Communications & Strategic Initiatives Manager for Black Ambition.

Together, they will share candid insights from across corporate, nonprofit and creative communications, exploring how professionals can find mission-driven opportunities, bring an impact lens into traditional organizations and transition into the growing social impact communications sector. Register to attend live here.

—

On October 1, join The AI Sandbox: Live-Building a Comms Plan with Human and Machine Intelligence, a live-action, interactive case study workshop exploring whether AI can match human strategic intuition in a high-stakes communications crisis.

This session will challenge participants to collaboratively build an impact communications plan in real-time, while ICI Executive Board member Abenaa Hayes guides the strategic human framework and provides consultation on how AI can be used in parallel, and to test our assumptions, ideas and decisions.

Meanwhile, Kris Krug will act as the "AI whisperer," creatively prompting advanced AI tools to see prompts or methodologies to create ethical, creative, and strategic pivots. RSVP and save your spot here!

WELCOMING ANNE GREENWOOD:

ICI’S MANAGING DIRECTOR

We are announcing Anne Greenwood as ICI’s new Managing Director! You’ll have seen her name and lovely presence at our most recent events and on Circle. She holds deep expertise from serving as the communications lead in the nonprofit sector, and she brings additional layers of wisdom through her experience as a founder and consultant. We are so lucky to have you on our team, Anne! Anne can be reached at anne@impactcommsinstitute.org, and she welcomes your outreach anytime.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

If this issue of The Agenda resonates with you, consider contributing! We're inviting short articles (300 words max) for the next issue, which will be distributed to our full list of ~2,500 subscribers. You might write about:

A practice you've adopted (or retired) in service of impact storytelling
A challenge you’ve worked through (or are still managing) - this doesn't need to be a success story, lessons learned are very welcome
An emerging topic you feel our community would benefit from hearing about

If you'd like to participate, reach out to hello@impactcommsinstitute.org. Our team is available to talk through an angle first, if that’s helpful. We’re excited to hear from you!

Thanks for reading,

- The Impact Communications Institute