Interaction Institute for Social Change

At IISC, we will work with people and systems to address the symptoms and root causes of the problem so that we can achieve our new vision of living on a healthy planet where people are thriving, valuing their differences, and working together for peace and justice.

We have five organizational goals at IISC in 2021:
1. Human Sustainability: To take care of ourselves and each other so that we can preserve our health and connection as a staff and community culture
2. Financial Sustainability: To keep IISC afloat financially so that we can continue to provide our mission in these critical times
3. Innovative & Efficient Operations: To ensure innovative and efficient operations guided by our values so that IISC can work more seamlessly and manage unprecedented change
4. Activate & Amplify Network: To harness our expanded network of affiliates, board, and partners so that we can meet our goals
5. Innovation & Adaptation: To continue to support innovation through virtual offerings so that we can adapt to and harness this moment

- Assess operations/systems/roles/technology so that we can identify needs for this next stage of innovation
- Invest in platforms, equipment, and training so that we can strengthen our ability to work and deliver in efficient and creative ways online
- Improve tracking of data so that we can make informed and wise organizational decisions
- Streamline reporting and accountability requirements for staff and affiliates so that we can gather information in a timely fashion and make it easy for people to cooperate
- Improve internal communications so that we have a better understanding of timelines and can address competing burdens and adjust capacity
- Improve business development and staffing systems to secure and begin work more efficiently
- Prioritize engagement with other racial justice actors and practitioners so that we can understand the needs of our field and movements and offer our unique gifts and contributions, and build connections for future work.
- Identify and partner with more clients in the "250 and 303 space" (BIPOC clients, movement clients, organizing clients)
- Find capacity and resources to move the book/field guide forward and design a COP around it, particularly for those in the 250/303 space; determine if this is the network of practitioners
- Bring FL4SC and FFRJW online so that we can complete our evolution of moving publics online and expand the capacity of leaders in this moment
- Design a pilot BIPOC offering so that we can support BIPOC leaders and communities at this time
- Pilot a cross-client community of practice (250/303) so that we can equip our clients and community with knowledge and brave actions for racial equity and racial justice
- Offer ARJ public and in house online (consider also a smaller or free offering)
- Expand our resources for external communications so that we have an overall communications strategy and upgrades to our website and e-newsletter, and a consistent graphic design of products and slides

Core Competencies: We have five core competencies that help us to achieve our mission:

• Facilitating difficult and complex conversations
• Building collaborative capacity for social change through training, tools, collaborative design, and decision-making
• Creating processes and building relationships and results that transform people and allow groups to collaborate for social justice
• Catalyzing and deepening racial equity and shared power within systems
• Centering systems thinking, equity, networks, and love.

Racial equity is not new work for us, but IISC focusing on it as the major strategy for the next several years is new. In our early years, IISC facilitated trainings and change processes to foster diversity and inclusion within an organization to enhance collaboration. In some systems, we worked more deeply on structural changes to improve outcomes. We have understood for some time that change needs to happen at fundamental institutional and structural levels, and that to do so requires longer term interventions and attention to how power is shared within institutions. Our ability to focus at the systems level, to transfer skills, and to facilitate change processes makes us unique in the field of racial justice.

Currently, IISC approaches racial equity in two principal ways: through skills training and equity change consulting.