Outreach & DEIA: Empowering diverse groups in our industry and communities

Posted on • Alley
modern and colorful design of diverse faces

As a company, we have a responsibility to use our positions, expertise, and knowledge to lift up historically marginalized groups such as women, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, and people with disabilities. We can achieve this through collaboration, support, and sharing resources with partners and businesses that are led by and serve these communities in a meaningful way.

What does outreach have to do with DEIA?

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is a community-wide matter that depends heavily on community-wide efforts to advance. That’s why at Alley, outreach is one of five key areas where we focus our (DEIA) efforts. From our beginnings, community-driven events have been a vital part of how we connect with other leaders in our industry and how we explore emerging trends, opportunities, and perspectives. By incorporating outreach as a focus area in our DEIA initiatives, we ensure more diverse representation in the communities we collaborate with and serve. 

Taking actionable steps

Setting goals and taking clear, actionable steps helps us uphold our values of quality, transparency, and accountability in everything we do — including in the DEIA space. To that end, we’ve outlined some specific goals and steps we’ve taken around expanding our outreach efforts in diverse spaces.

Our Goals

  • Reach and maintain at least 50% participation in Alley’s Day of Service
  • Partner with four (or more) organizations annually that support and empower historically marginalized people
  • Sponsor two or more events annually that promote women, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, or people with disabilities in the technology, journalism, and nonprofit industries
  • Sponsor membership opportunities for employees to join associations that are meaningful to them and embrace their intersectionality

Steps we’ve taken

  • Sponsored the Online News Association’s Women’s Leadership Accelerator, which offers an intensive program of mentoring, discussion and learning from some of the top minds in digital media (Annually since 2018)
  • Joined Out In Tech, the world’s largest non-profit community of 2SLGBTQIA+ tech leaders seeking to help others advance their careers, network, and leverage tech for social change (Q3 2020)
  • Established a policy for an annual Day of Service, which allows team members to select one or more days each year (paid) to serve their communities or an organization of their choosing — and Alley Group will donate $100 to the organization/community (Q1 2021)
  • Partnered with InHerSight, which provides the largest database and reviews of women-rated companies (Q2 2021)

What the future holds

Cultivating a diverse network takes time, continuous research, and collaboration. We will continue to seek diverse organizations in the technology, journalism, and nonprofit spaces for sponsorship, team member involvement, and community events that inspire and empower diverse communities. We also know that research thrives on documentation, and we will work to improve our governance efforts to more effectively distribute guidance around service and volunteer opportunities and keep track of how our community involvement impacts our job candidate pipeline, our partnerships, and our clientele.