Decent Work

Implications of Decent Work

HANO has launched a campaign to identify and share the implications of DECENT WORK for Hawaii’s nonprofit sector.

We see Decent Work as broadly encompassing issues like:

nonprofit salaries and benefits at all levels of employment
diverse, equitable, and inclusive work opportunities and workplaces
understanding and communicating the true cost of doing business and creating quality outcomes
succession and the talent pipeline and more

Parents and Children Together Staff Photo

We see Decent Work as broadly encompassing issues like: We will be looking for issues that are common across the state as well as issues unique to each island or county. Along the way, we are compiling resources on Decent Work-related issues. Please let us know if you have resources that we should add to this page.

Recommended Resources

CERTIFICATE | Diversity and Inclusion: Starting with a look at employee engagement, then identifying interventions surrounding unconscious bias and specific diversity and inclusion strategies, this program is appropriate for anyone committed to going beyond mere compliance to build a truly aware and inclusive work culture.
CERTIFICATE | Diversity and Inclusion for HR: This certificate is designed specifically for HR personnel and provides a deep foundation for you to identify, develop, and support HR initiatives for diversity and inclusion that can improve not only your organization’s culture but its success.

Shaping the Future: Leadership in Ontario’s Nonprofit Labour Force: This report by the Ontario Nonprofit Network and MowatNFP summarizes data from survey research and outlines strategies for renewing the people that sustain Ontario’s nonprofit sector.
Change Work: Valuing decent work in the not-for-profit sector: This report by MowatNFP, the Ontario Nonprofit Network and the Toronto Neighbourhood Centres, explores the concept of decent work and its potential for the not-for-profit sector.

People with Disabilities

Job Accommodation Network: The Job Accommodation Network (JAN) is the leading source of free, expert, and confidential guidance on workplace accommodations and disability employment issues. Working toward practical solutions that benefit both employer and employee, JAN helps people with disabilities enhance their employability, and shows employers how to capitalize on the value and talent that people with disabilities add to the workplace.
The Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN): A free resource that helps employers tap the benefits of disability diversity by educating public and private sector organizations on ways to build inclusive workplace cultures.
The Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP): A recruitment and referral program that connects federal sector employers nationwide with highly motivated college students and recent graduates with disabilities who are eager to prove their abilities in the workplace through summer or permanent jobs.
Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technology (PEAT): A multi-faceted initiative to foster collaboration and action around accessible technology in the workplace. Guided by a consortium of policy and technology leaders, PEAT works to help employers, IT companies, and others to understand why it pays to build and buy accessible technology, and how to do so.
Campaign for Disability Employment (CDE): The CDE is a collaborative effort among several disability and business organizations that is working to change attitudes about disability and employment.
AVA App: Phone app that provides 5 free hours of interpreting for communicating with people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Sweet ‘Star Wars’ Ad Goes Viral For Showing How Much Inclusion Matters: Two little boys show us the importance of inclusion in a story made for everyone in the galaxy.
Washington DC Government’s Disability Sensitivity Training Video: click to view on YouTube.

Awake to Woke to Work: Building a Race Equity Culture: This report by Equity in the Center highlights the Race Equity Cycle that organizations go through as they transform from a white dominant culture to a Race Equity Culture.
Other Woke Resources: Equity in the Center’s website has links to numerous resources and studies about racial equity, especially focused on equity in leadership.
So you don’t think race, equity, diversity, and inclusion are relevant to your mission: This blog post by Nonprofit AF writer Vu Le asserts that issues of race, equity, diversity and inclusion affect ALL nonprofits, and thinking your organization is exempt indicates a level of privilege and lack of awareness that may be detrimental to the work. The post focus on three key concepts: Disproportionality of Impact; Inequitable Access to Services; and Root Causes of Injustice.
The Role of Senior Leaders in Building a Race Equity Culture: In this article from Bridgespan, Kerrien Suarez (director of Equity in the Center, a project of ProInspire that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems within the social sector to increase racial equity) describes how to build an organizational culture that embraces racial equity, senior leaders need to set the tone and drive progress of the work.
A black man and a white woman switch mics, and the result is amazing: In this powerful video, Eastern Michigan University students Darius Simpson and Scout Bostley speak for each other—and show us a thing or two about privilege.
The racial dynamics between American women are flipped in a disorienting photo series: In a photo essay first published in O Magazine, photographer Chris Buck explores the stereotypical representations of white and non-white girls and women – and flips it.

Ageism: Understanding the effects on seniors: Paula Span of the New York Times explores the negative psychological and physical effects ageism, particularly internal ageism, has on our bodies as we age.
‘Why We Can’t Sleep’ Documents The Unique Pressures On Gen X Women: An interview from NPR’s Morning Edition with the author Ada Calhoun about her new book ‘Why We Can’t Sleep’ in which she lays out what makes the burdens heavier on Gen X than other generations.

Most UH Students Are People Of Color But Their Teachers Are Mainly White: This article speaks to the struggles the University of Hawaii faces when hiring faculty who are people of color, and how the faculty do not necessarily represent the makeup of the student body
Want to Be Less Racist? Move to Hawaii: In this New York Times opinion piece, Moises Velasquez-Manoff explores whether or not Hawaii is a less racist place (than some on the continent) and the role the “aloha spirit” plays.
Mauna Kea, technology, and kuleana: In this blog post by Purple Maia from June 2015, they share thoughts on Mauna Kea, technology, and kuleana through an equity lens (people of color do not have equal access to technology education and high-skilled jobs in technology), proposing that for technology to truly serve communities, technology practitioners must listen and think critically about how their work impacts communities and the land before, during and after undertaking projects.
Hawaii must get past pseudo-diversity: Punahou graduate (2019) Melissa Newsham describes the need for us to get past the superficial indicators of diversity and strive for true diversity of opinions and perspectives, particularly in local government.

How to Integrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion into Everyday Operations: In this article from Bridgespan, Maria Hernandez, PhD (practice leader for Global Consulting Solutions, InclusionINC) shares how nonprofit leaders committed to integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into their organizations can adopt new practices and behaviors to live into this goal.
Three Ways to Improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Philanthropy: This article from Stanford Social Innovation Review shares thoughts about how if funders want to improve DEI in their organizations, they need to re-define risk, emphasize trust, and reflect the communities they serve.
When you don’t disclose salary range on a job posting, a unicorn loses its wings: In this Nonprofit AF blog post, Vu Le shares why not disclosing salary ranges for nonprofit positions perpetuates gender, race and ability inequity.
Moving beyond Feedback: The Promise of Participatory Grantmaking: In this Nonprofit Quarterly article, author Cynthia M. Gibson describes recent efforts in “Participatory Grantmaking,” where some grant makers are moving beyond simply soliciting feedback from grantees and community partners to creating opportunities for two-way communication that leads to joint decision-making.
Building an Equitable Future: Museums and Reparations: In this Center for the Future of Museums blog, Elizabeth Merritt describes how museums can contribute to enduring, meaningful reparations for slavery in three ways: culturally, through the narratives they tell; economically, through how they manage their money; and systemically, through how they share their power.
The Ethics of Nonprofit Storytelling: Survivor Porn and Parading Trauma: This podcast looks at the ethics of survivor storytelling and asks some hard questions about the power dynamics between survivors and the nonprofits that have helped them.
Content creators, here’s an Equity Screen to use as you work on your next blog post, book, podcast, or video: In this blog post from Nonprofit AF, Vu Le shares an Equity Screen to use when reviewing content on your blog posts, podcasts, videos, websites, etc.
Why ‘Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’ Is Obsolete: Nicole Brewer discusses why ED&I is an ineffective tool in the theater world, when just used as a superficial solution.
Project Implicit: Project Implicit is a nonprofit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition–thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the Internet. This site allows you to take a test to discover what your implicit bias may be.
How to talk about disability sensitively and avoid ableist tropes: This NPR article talks about how embedded ableism is in our language, biases and perceptions of disability and some common tropes to avoid.
Glossary of Ableist Language: This is a list of ableist words and terms for reference purposes. Some of the entries are slurs, some are descriptions of disabled people or other people with pathologized identities/bodies/experiences, some are slang that derive from ableist origins, and some are common metaphors that rely on disability and ableism. This is a living document, constantly growing, expanding, and changing.
Addressing structural racism in the healthcare system: This website shares what we found across the country about the origins and experiences of racism in the US healthcare system. People in Hawaiʻi, as well as, across the country were interviewed. It identified the types of shifts that are needed in the healthcare system to dismantle structural racism, as well as the type of leadership needed. This project was initiated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Effects of Boosting Hawaii’s Minimum Wage – April 2019: This report by Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice makes the case for why raising Hawaii’s minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2024 would be tranformative to our workers, especially women, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.
All right, we need to talk about nonprofit salaries: In this Nonprofilt AF blog post, Vu Le talks about nonprofit sector bad habits in setting salaries for employees and shares strategies to break those bad habits.
When you don’t disclose salary range on a job posting, a unicorn loses its wings: In this Nonprofit AF blog post, Vu Le shares why not disclosing salary ranges for nonprofit positions perpetuates gender, race and ability inequity.
States With $15 Minimum Wage Laws Doubled This Year: This article (with reporting by Andrew Ballard, Tripp Baltz, Brenna Goth, and Aaron Nicodemus) maps the status of minimum wage in each state.

From Program Manager to Director of Talent and Innovation: This article features Bonnie Hunter of North York Community House sharing how as director of talent and innovation she is creating a humane (decent) workplace in her nonprofit.
Top Reasons to Invest in Nonprofit Talent: Fund the People has created this toolkit to help change attitudes and behaviors of nonprofits, funders, and intermediaries around investing in the talent pipeline. Note: The resource is available for download once a name, organization name, and email address are provided.
Student Debt is hurting the nonprofit community – and CalNonprofits is doing something about it: This article, from CalNonprofits, describes their work on the Nonprofit Student Debt Project initiative to educate nonprofit staff and employers, advocate for public policy changes, and engage community about the problem of student debt and its impact on the nonprofit workforce.
Public Service Loan Forgiveness: This article on the National Council of Nonprofits’ website, describes the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF) for loan forgiveness, cancellation, and/or consolidation of Federal student loans for those employed by a nonprofit or the government and have student loan debt.
How to Build Competency-Based Professional Development Plans: This article by The Bridgespan Group explores how more effective employees help organizations create greater impact. The focus in on building professional development plans for a nonprofit’s employees by determining the competencies they need to succeed in their roles. Then, employing the 70/20/10 development method to help them learn and grow while on the job.