To our colleagues, clients, partners, and community —

We unequivocally join those in our communities and across the nation expressing outrage and grief over the continued defamation, disempowerment, commodification, criminalization, and violence enacted on Black people in this country. We stand with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Our country’s centuries-long legacy of White supremacy and oppression of Black people stands in the way of equity and justice. We mourn the recent deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and those whose names we do not know. While these deaths are tragedies, they are not new and they are not unexpected. They are not only byproducts of poor decisions by the officers in question. These deaths are predictable outcomes of the myriad of systems which were designed from the beginning to exclude and discriminate. Black people confront disproportionate barriers and discrimination in housing, education, transportation, physical and mental health care, child care, nutrition, green space, jobs, wealth-building opportunities, legal services, political representation, law enforcement, and incarceration. Every day, at every level, Black people — especially those experiencing compounding discrimination because of their gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, immigration status, or disability — face systems that uphold White supremacy. They occur within our institutions as well as in forms that are subtle and deeply rooted in a culture of prejudice, privilege, and unconscious bias. The results of this culture are clear and consistent — in America, Black communities have lived in terror, have had their labor and lives stolen and have been subjected to higher levels of poverty, poor health, and lack of opportunity and autonomy from the arrival of the first slave ships in 1619.

HTA was founded more than 20 years ago with a mission of supporting and empowering organizations to create a more healthy, educated, equitable, and just society. While we will continue to work to address the root causes and lasting consequences of structural racism, we take this moment as a call to action to do more. We must take risks, we must investigate ourselves and our field, and we must take on the constant and iterative work needed to uphold our mission. Words about equity without actions mean nothing. As a company, we are committing to the following:

We have work to do internally. We recognize that it is incumbent on every single one of us to dismantle structural inequity and injustice, and that we must listen, learn, and relearn what we each have absorbed from the world around us that we bring into our work.

  • We are committing to creating an intentional learning community among employees to learn history, listen to Black leaders, and unlearn racism, privilege, and implicit bias
  • We are taking time to reflect upon and acknowledge our organizational history and interpersonal dynamics with the lens of racial bias. We are working to strengthen trust and communication among colleagues to foster a safer workplace that is actively anti-racist.
  • We will work with a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion expert to guide us in this work

We must take action in our work to fight against anti-Black racism, now and in the long term.

  • HTA is matching employee donations, directing funds to local and national non-profit organizations and grassroots activists, including organizations working to organize on the front lines, bail funds, legal services, research and advocacy organizations, Black community-building, and health and education services.
  • We are committing to increasing access to our services for Black-owned and Black-run organizations that are working to address racism in its many intersectional forms, recognizing that there are structural issues within the social sector that keep these organizations perpetually underfunded
  • We are creating a forum to amplify the work we see our amazing clients doing which address root causes of racism and offer community-based approaches to public safety and health
  • We will be more forthright in initiating tough conversations with our clients, using data and making recommendations around reducing disparities in their work and organizations
  • And, we will take a more active role in professional networks, such as the Advancing Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation Network, whose work addresses White privilege in our field.

In solidarity,

Tim Tabernik and the entire HTA Team