while this article is about “events”, advice is applicable to the #floss project board too : labs.ripe.net/author/becha/spr…

#Inclusion is it possible to participate online ?
#Diversity have a Code of Conduct

#Equity be explicit about your ethics

#Justice make it about political goals of FLOSS (& not only “tech”) ;

work on solving systemic problems -> that will attract different applicants!

Is there a search sub-committee? Do you advertise on "normal" charity boards, or just FOSS ones? Are you able to compensate? Have you expicitly said you want to diversify the board?

If you do manage to find someone, it's hard to make the board representative without making that person a representative of their minority.

I haven't dealt with diversity balancing, but from both being on boards and reporting to them I would offer one useful tip: if you want the current board to get on side, speak privately to one or two of them who would be sympathetic and ask them to raise a more diverse board as an agenda item at the next meeting.

This makes it official, shows allyship, and will help get the ball rolling. An actionable item could then be to identify 3-5 potential new board members before the next meeting.

Not specifically in this context, but I have experience in various diversity programmes. One thing to highlight:

When you frame the problem as ‘we need more women’ (or more people of a particular ethnicity, or sexual orientation, or whatever) then this immediately devalues people in the group that you are trying to target. We did a lot of work at Microsoft to try to stop senior leadership boasting at all-hands meetings that they’d hired more women, because women in the audience immediately thought ‘was I hired just because I’m a woman?’ And then thought ‘do my colleagues think I was hired because I am a woman?’ Which then immediately undermines them in their job.

Not having women in leadership positions is not the problem, it is a trailing indicator of the problem. The root problems are likely to be things like:

• You are recruiting from places women avoid, or which favour men.
• You are recruiting via your networks, where women are underrepresented.
• You are encouraging an in-group culture that makes everyone not in that group feel excluded and this disproportionately affects women (you will also be losing other people for the same reason).
• You are organising things at times that are inconvenient for people with carer responsibilities, which disproportionately affects women.
• You are looking for people who have a lot of free time and this systematically excludes a load of people (you can’t fix this as a volunteer project, but you can push for government equity initiatives).

Remember: your goal is to find the best people. The fact that roughly 52% of the population are self-deselecting before you even get to evaluate them on relevant metrics is a significant indicator that you are failing at this. Keep that framing in mind.

Not a governance board, but my workplace recently did a round of "how can we improve our metrics for DEI" and I was part of the working group.

I would say, don't recruit diverse people and then require them to fit into the mold of doing everything in the exact same way as white men (in the case of a workplace, a "traditional" cis straight non-disabled neurotypical early-rising Christian white man out of the 1950s who is sole breadwinner and has a wife at home that does all the housework and childcare). You get and keep diverse people by fitting the way the board works to the people, not the other way around.

I am most grateful for all the helpful responses so far.

Thank you.

A friend of mine has been one to push this in a few places, I’ve linked this to them

they’re not on fedi but if you can give me alt contact details (even in dm) I can send that along too

Sensitive content Clicca per aprire/chiudere

my experience is from a large company, I’m not sure how well it would apply.

We started at the bottom and worked up. Starting with employee resource groups for women, bipoc, lgbtq+, etc. Each group chose a representative for the larger diversity council.

Originally I think it was intended to gather differing opinions and then feed them through a shredder into the garbage, but it grew into something more. Turns out there were more of us than them.

I've participated in a search committee tasked with specifically recruiting and inviting diverse participants. This took an existing leadership that wanted the group to change and grow.

Recruitment contacts were greatly enhanced by participation in and sponsorship of diversity-focused umbrella organizations. In one particular infosec case (in USA), WiCyS sponsorship bore great fruit. In aerospace, AIAA & similar professional societies had diversity efforts that I've tapped.

One thing to add, which pairs with @david_chisnall 's observation -

it’s important that the existing board deeply understand why diverse participation is valuable, specifically for your context.

For example, it might be that in order to encourage broader project participation, you may want members with first-hand experience of marginalization to spot and address cultural or structural issues. Issues that the current board may be struggling to even see except for trailing indicators.

I do this sort of work in my church context.

It requires a commitment to change across the whole group - so not just in governance, but from those involved in the day to day work as well.

It has been helpful to understand why we care - for us that comes from our understanding of God, but for your project it might be from the project goals? That helps to sustain the work.

If you don't already have reasonable representation in non-governance roles, I would start there.

If I was being recruited, I would look to see:

1. Does the project have a code of conduct that is reasonable and progressive? I don't want to be the person brought in to have all the incredibly basic fights and then burn out and leave. I want the incredibly basic groundwork to be something the existing members of the organization are on board with.

2. Is there governance set up in case someone currently in the project turns out to be a shit? Could they be removed without a "burned to the ground" campaign?

I've tried to encourage diversity in several settings. I hope they're helpful examples.

1) The place I was employed - limited success, but they did at least get it when I pointed out *all* the images of people in marketing and recruitment materials were white. They hadn't noticed, because they weren't excluded or attuned to noticing exclusion of not-them groups. The public visibility of your org/board may be similarly polarised. Eg, listing your current all-male membership on your website may be self-reinforcing, even though it's also good transparency.

2) Author Help. My partner's self-publishing company. I suggested a Statement of Principals be added to our website. It includes statements on race, LGBTQIA+, environment, etc. At least one customer came to us because of it. It is likely it has been a factor in more, because it's the sort of thing oppressed groups might look for. Again, it's about the publicly visible aspect of the organisation being explicitly inclusive.

3) This thread. You asked very specifically for experiences in increasing volunteer board diversity. That's very niche. I nearly didn't reply because my experience isn't that. But of the people who do have experience in that area, how many are in the overrepresented group? So I have fought the niggling voice in my head that says I'm sticking my nose in where it's not wanted. It's the same voice that may be currently preventing non-male participation, so you probably need to hear about it. Go read my first couple of sentences again for an example of how it manifests.