Crane Institute of Sustainability, the nonprofit home of the Intentional Endowments Network (IEN), is committed to making justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) part of the culture and the strength of our organization and work. We believe that diversity improves the creativity and problem solving of our organization and enhances the impact of our work.  We strive to recognize, and help others recognize, the implicit biases we hold and how those affect our decision making and worldviews. We aim to be an anti-racist organization and to help breakdown the unjust systems to enable the development of more equitable and just systems in all facets of society including education, business, finance, governance, and civil society. 

We value cognitive diversity - the different ways that people think and communicate - and demographic diversity, as it relates to age, color, disability, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees and constituents unique.

We work to integrate JEDI into our structure and mission.  We are continuously seeking opportunities for staff training, exploration, and education on JEDI topics.  We proactively build our networks to include more people from diverse backgrounds including our board of directors, staff, interns, steering committees, and working groups.  We seek continuous improvement in developing skills to create a welcoming and inclusive environment within our organization and through our network activities.  We believe this helps to retain employees, board members and network members.  We prioritize JEDI in the design of our programs, making every effort to ensure we always have women and people of color and diverse perspectives on the agenda for all programs.

Our programming goals include dismantling racism and supporting the careers and professional development of traditionally marginalized or underrepresented groups to help create a more equitable and just society, aligning with the mission of the organization.   

Learn more about our ever-evolving programmatic work on these topics via the Investing in Social Equity page.