Navigating Implicit Bias within Corporate Volunteer Programs: Empowering Nonprofits to Raise Awareness and Set Expectations by Lilly Emmaline Smith [email protected] Capstone Research Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Nonprofit Administration Degree in the School of Management directed by Dr. Marco Tavanti San Francisco, California Spring 2020 Abstract As corporate volunteer programs become an increasingly popular tool to benefit society, nonprofit organizations must update traditional program structures to address implicit bias and set positive behavioral expectations to positively engage with under-represented beneficiaries. Implicit bias has the unfortunate power to outweigh good intentions and can prevent society from thriving in its diversity. Therefore, corporate volunteer programs harbor the serious risk of harming the indented beneficiary with unchecked assumptions. This paper explores how nonprofits can navigate implicit bias within corporate volunteer programs to raise awareness and ensure positive programmatic experiences and outcomes. Through a literature review, qualitative expert interviews, and quantitative survey results, five recommendations were identified. Implications of this research recommend that nonprofit organizations running corporate volunteer programs keep financial negotiations and processing separate, screen potential partners to gauge readiness before engaging, customize planning content to meet the partner where they are, host intentional kickoffs to set expectations, and check for understanding throughout to strengthen relationships. Keywords: behavioral expectations, communications, corporate volunteer programs, implicit bias, nonprofit volunteer managers, relationship building, under-resourced beneficiaries Acknowledgments Thank you to my inspiring and resilient classmates. Meeting this cohort has been a true honor. I am so grateful for everything I’ve learned from you all. The stars aligned for me to have had the chance to study at the same time as this group, and I will value the impacts that this has had on me forever. I am so excited to see what you all do next and I am humbled by your awesomeness. Thank you to my dearest Shawn. It is overwhelming to reflect on how much you support me every day and I am so grateful to have you in my life. Thank you for reminding me that I’m capable when I need to be reminded and thank you for empowering me to kick ass. Thank you for all of the good times and love. Thank you, Zephyr and Wookie! Living life with you two is my raison d’être and I don’t know how I got so lucky! Thank you for your endless support and love. Thank you to my wonderful family. As cliché as it sounds, nobody believes in me like you all! Your confidence in me gives me confidence in myself. Thank you to my most amazing mom, Kate, for giving me EVERYTHING and, specifically for helping me vent to keep me going. You remind me of why I work hard. Thank you to my wonderful grandparents for all of the love and support. Sharing what I’m learning with you two has been a highlight of this experience and thank you for helping me achieve it! Thank you to the Oakland Public Education Fund. I wish I could tell my younger self that I was going to get to work here one day, because this job is such a dream. I learn something new every day, and I’m so grateful for the honor to work with Oakland public schools. Thank you to all of you for all of the opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive! Truly, I couldn’t have gone to school if it weren’t for this beautiful group of teammates - thank you! Table of Contents List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iiii Section 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 Purpose Statement ................................................................................................. 2 Section 2: Literature Review .............................................................................................. 2 Relationship and Readiness ................................................................................... 3 Common Program Structures and Risk for Implicit Bias ......................................... 6 What Do Beneficiaries Value? .............................................................................. 12 Barriers to the Conversation ................................................................................ 14 Research Questions .............................................................................................. 17 Section 3: Methods and Approaches ............................................................................... 18 Qualitative Research Project Methods ................................................................ 18 Quantitative Research Project Methods .............................................................. 20 Section 4. Data Results and Analysis ................................................................................ 23 Qualitative Results ............................................................................................... 23 Quantitative Results ............................................................................................ 25 Section 5: Implications and Recommendations ............................................................... 35 Discussion of Research Question 1 ...................................................................... 35 Discussion of Research Question 2 ..................................................................... 40 Recommendations ............................................................................................... 43 Model ................................................................................................................... 45 Recommendations for Future Research ............................................................... 46 Section 6: Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 47 List of References ............................................................................................................. 49 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 54 Author’s Bio ...................................................................................................................... 84 i List of Tables Table 1. Corporate Volunteer Program Overview with Level of Preparation .................. 11 Table 2. List of Valuable and Detrimental Beneficiary Engagements with Corporate Volunteers ........................................................................................... 15 Table 3. Expert Interviewees, Purview, and Schedule ..................................................... 21 Table 4. Emergent Categories, Concepts, and Recommendations from Expert Interviews ............................................................................................................. 25 Table 5. Survey Results, Demographic ............................................................................. 26 Table 6. Survey Results, Respondent Opinions on Statements ........................................ 28 Table 7. Survey Results, Respondent Opinions on Discussion Elements .......................... 29 Table 8. Job Title Descriptives and T-Tests on Statement Agreement ............................ 30 Table 9. Job Title Descriptives and T-Tests on Program Elements ................................... 31 Table 10. Race/Ethnicity Descriptives and T-Tests on Statement Agreement ................ 33 Table 11. Race/Ethnicity and T-Tests on Program Elements ............................................ 34 ii List of Figures Figure 1. Community Involvement: A Road Map to Deliver Value to Business and Society ................................................................................................................ 12 Figure 2. Comparative Demographics U.S. vs. Survey Results ......................................... 27 Figure 3. Corporate Volunteer Program Challenges ........................................................ 38 Figure 4. Model: How to Address Implicit Bias and Set Positive Behavioral Expectations with Corporate Volunteers ............................................................. 46 iii 1 Section 1. Introduction Corporate volunteerism is on the rise. Increasingly, for-profit businesses are motivated to engage with nonprofits and associated beneficiary populations to make a positive social impact because there are clear business benefits (See Figure 1 below). Employee satisfaction and retention increases as a result of corporate volunteer programs because prosocial motivations to volunteer increase the likelihood that an employee will perceive their company as bringing good into the world (Shao, 2017 & Rodell, 2017). In turn, this also helps the company to recruit talented employees within a competitive job market (Grant, 2012). Additionally, with the rise of the Social Enterprise business model, more and more companies feel that they have a responsibility to make a positive social impact and hold themselves to a triple bottom line, people, profits, and planet (Lee, 2019). And from the perspective