ICDI was a small, volunteer-run organization poised for growth when I came into leadership.  The strong foundation in justice and the big hearts of everyone were assets to build on.  Change was necessary and not always welcome.  Below is a condensed description of some of the organizational changes that I spearheaded and facilitated.

 

NAME AND LOGO CHANGE

A survey of current supporters revealed that there was a disconnect between the name and the current state of the organization.  Whereas originally the work was supported by a small committee of faith leaders, ICDI had grown to include over 250 volunteers. To align with the current reality, I changed the word Committee to Community. User Feedback about this change showed that volunteers and faith partners felt 'more engaged' and 'a part of something bigger'. 

 

Furthermore, feedback from both community members and outsiders described the existing logo as 'harsh', 'militaristic', and 'insensitive to colorblind eyes'.  I redesigned the logo, preserving some of the traditional elements but updating the look and feel and rendering various configurations for social media use.  The new logo was received as 'friendly', 'inclusive', 'a circle of care' and 'soothing' in user testing.

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CATHOLIC TO INTERFAITH

ICDI was founded by two Catholic Sisters of Mercy.  The unspoken values and program approaches were rooted in Catholic social teaching and culture. Breathing life into the interfaith aspect of the work was an incredible opportunity to build relationships, foster new uderstandings, encourage interfaith dialogue, and support spiritual growth.  This was achieved through networking in Sikh, Muslim, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, Jewish, and other faith communities and challenging existing volunteers to grow their skills and learn how to better spiritually support people of different faiths and welcome new volunteers from other faiths.  Programs were audited for bias to improve services and to be inclusive of other faith perspectives.  The increase in organizational interfaith competency also included growing inclusive practices regarding holidays, customs, and religious practices.

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ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Originally an all-volunteer Catholic organization, I grew ICDI to have religiously diverse and paid staff for all programs and administration functions.  This required the organizational culture to shift from one of vocation and sacrifice to a culture of fair labor practices and a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) framework. I incorporated anti-racism training into professional development for staff.  Additionally, I paid special attention to upskilling staff in trauma-informed care, including the self and community care needed to mitigate the vicarious trauma that was inherently part of the work and rewrote HR policies to be just, humane, and customizable to individual employee needs and requests.

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SYSTEMS

ICDI initially had all databases locally stored on one server in the office.  Nothing was accessible remotely.  In the time that I was there, I moved operations and program systems to cloud-based databases, supported the implementation of donor and grant tracking software, and created connections and shared resources between formerly siloed programs.

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INCREASED BUDGET from $250,000 to $1M+ and DIVERSIFIED FUNDING

As a small organization, ICDI had conducted much of its fundraising on a wing and a prayer.  This had worked! However, to support growth and ensure the sustainability of programs, I put systems in place to structure fundraising. I launched the first online campaign and systematized the grant writing process. Under my leadership we secured some of the first significant gifts from non-Christian faith partners as well as several larger foundation grants.