The Crucial Role of Lived Experience in Social Impact Communications Consultants

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Why is engaging social impact consultants with lived experience in racialized and low-wealth communities important for CDFIs?

In the opportunity finance sector, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) play a crucial role in addressing societal challenges faced by racialized and low-wealth communities. 

To maximize their storytelling impact about the work they do in underrepresented communities, it's essential CDFIs engage strategic communications consultants with cultural competence from lived experience. 

These consultants can help opportunity finance sector organizations maintain a focus on centering equity, cultural humility, and authentic community representation. That approach facilitates deeper trust within minoritized and low-resource communities. 

To achieve this level of impact, consultants to organizations in this sector must possess a deep understanding of cultural nuances. That can ensure their strategies resonate authentically with the communities these organizations serve.

For CDFIs, authentically embedding equity into every facet of their work is fundamental to achieving maximum impact, especially among housing and small business loan funds. With a mission to democratize access to capital, their programs inherently prioritize equitable treatment and funding opportunities for under-resourced communities. They systematically assess and address disparities in capital access, outcomes, and representation through targeted financing strategies.

However, effectively operationalizing equity requires more than just frameworks and toolkits. It requires a deep understanding of the nuanced challenges faced by those with identities defined by their protected class or financial background. Achieving equitable outcomes hinges on fostering diverse representation in leadership and decision-making processes, engaging with core community stakeholders, and shifting power dynamics to amplify under-recognized voices.

This is where leveraging culturally competent strategic communications consultants becomes vital. Ones with lived experience in underrepresented communities can provide invaluable insights that inform more inclusive, resonant messaging strategies. Their perspectives help CDFIs authentically embed equity in external messaging, community engagement, program design, and narrative building in a manner that cultivates trust and drives sustained impact.

Often, organizations engage in anti-bias training to help those without lived experience in the communities they serve "achieve" cultural competence. But, research shows this often is ineffective. For one thing, as the chart below shows, humans of all backgrounds have an enormous number of cognitive biases—researchers have identified at least 200 as of 2023 —that they process in multiple situations daily. That means employees in CDFIs and related nonprofits serve may find cultural competence training designed to address them overwhelming.

Also, traditional cultural competency training for organizational leaders risks oversimplifying cultures, instead promoting stereotyping of those communities. When they consider non-White cultures or gendered people monolithic, these trainings can inadvertently reinforce biases and "othering" mindsets.

Further, failing to account for intersectionality means they overlook how an individual's multidimensional identities shape their experiences, values, and behaviors. Oversimplified cultural competence trainings may undermine leaders' ability to truly understand and connect with the realities confronting underrepresented groups.

That's why it's essential to distinguish between cultural competence that comes from lived experience and the cultural humility required to engage with low-wealth and racialized communities.

Cultural humility is a a power-cognizant, relationship-based approach to engaging with others outside your primary social group and the subgroups within them. We all have intersectional identities and we need to consider them when communicating with people who may not share all aspects of them.

For example, while people may be racialized, they may not share the same economic or educational experiences as others in the racial group that they're associated with. Someone can be White, Black or Brown but low-wealth with minimal education beyond high school. Others in those same groups can by affluent or wealthy and well educated, having more in common with each other than the low-wealth groups of any racialized identity. That's what makes cultural humility imperative in both social impact communications consultants and leaders of the organization where they have engagements

When engaging with diverse communities, especially those facing systemic marginalization, adopting an stance of cultural humility is crucial for impactful communications work. Cultural humility involves a continual openness to learning about others' histories, contexts and realities that shape their experiences. It requires developing deep self-awareness about one's own inherent biases and blind spots that stem from privileges or dominant identities.

Embracing an "egoless" mindset, devoid of arrogance or assumptions that one's perspective is universal, allows for genuinely supportive interactions built on empathetic listening.

To be clear, a strategic impact communications consultant who has cultural competence through lived experience may be an expert at intercultural communications with the groups they represent. But, make sure they have cultural humility with groups they don't have lived experience within. 

They must maintain cultural humility even within the multiple cultures that may comprise the group where they have lived experience. 

Adopting cultural humility involves recognizing and respecting cultural differences while remaining open to learning and understanding diverse perspectives. Cultivating cultural humility is an ongoing process of self-reflection and openness to understanding others within their cultural contexts for all professionals. That consistent self-reflection and an willingness to engage in self-critique are vital--constantly interrogating your motivations, inadvertent biases, and internalized of oppressive societal narratives. Navigating the power imbalances that exist between privileged and marginalized groups demands this level of humility.

But, it enables nonprofit professionals and the culturally competent communications consultants they engage to cultivate authentic connections built on trust, respect, and inclusion. That's essential for effectively communicating with and understanding the nuanced struggles facing the different communities CDFIs and related mission-driven nonprofits serve.

It requires deliberately and consistently engaging with people based on their self-identified intersectional identities. That's a way nonprofit leaders can foster authentic community collaborations, leading to more meaningful relationships and drive impact.

Practicing cultural humility also empowers CDFI sector leaders to work effectively with culturally competent consultants with lived experience in marginalized groups to confront and dismantle power disparities and established structural barriers to drive more program impact.

Adopting cultural humility is a journey of personal and professional growth. It doesn't end with a single training program like developing cultural competence often does. Again, it requires ongoing work and self-examination to shift internal narratives, change biased thought processes, and regularly incorporate cultural humility into daily engagement with groups outside of the dominant culture.

By committing to this continuing process, CDFI industry professionals position themselves to more effectively challenge systems of oppression and drive positive change.

Culturally competent strategic impact communications consultants with lived experience elevate CDFI messaging and engagement in fundamental ways. 

They have firsthand understanding of the challenging daily issues faced by CDFIs' key stakeholders, whether they are their core constituents or the community organizations that serve them. Those organizations, like housing counseling or entrepreneurship programs, often are staffed by people from the same communities. 

These unique communicators can craft narratives that authentically capture the voices, strengths, and journeys of the communities CDFIs represent, while helping eliminate stigma or racialized or classist biases.

They help transform communications strategies by using their intersectional lens to embrace the diversity within under-resourced and under-recognized groups. Their insights can pinpoint complexities others may overlook, leading to storytelling that genuinely reflects the cultural nuances and diversity within communities.

Ultimately, engaging consultants with cultural competence from lived experience supports a CDFI's ability to build trust, deeper community connections, and more equitable initiatives that catalyze positive social change.

Engaging culturally competent strategic communications consultants with lived experience among stakeholder communities allows nonprofits to disseminate resonant stories. These narratives effectively connect with communities, address societal inequities, and catalyze meaningful change. Centering equity, cultural humility, and authentic cultural insight builds trust, inclusion and sustainable impact.

By promoting these values, amplifying diverse voices, and committing to continuous growth, CDFI and nonprofit leaders can co-create transformative stories with their culturally competent strategic communicators. These narratives can dismantle biases, confront systemic oppression, and reshape a more equitable society in partnership with the communities CDFIs serve.

Dahna M. Chandler is a doctoral researcher at the University of Southern California, studying the history of racialized discrimination in the U.S. finance industry, and an award-winning finance journalist. She holds a master's in corporate communications from Georgetown University. She works with opportunity finance sector organizations and related mission-driven nonprofits as a social impact communications consultant, drawing from her own lived experiences that align with those organizations' core constituents. Contact her for potential collaborations.

(c) 2024. Dahna M. Chandler for UpThink Strategic Communications, a division of Thrive Media Collaborative, Inc. All rights reserved. This case story may not be reproduced or reposted in whole or in part without express written permission of the author.