In Practice: Creating a Safe Space for BIPOC Alumni

Winter 2022

By Milyna Phillips

shutterstock_1704277120-Converted-(1).pngMost advancement offices use a donor prospecting software to gauge potential donors’ wealth and likelihood of giving. The standard prospecting process has historically left out Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). And BIPOC alumni who have been traumatized at independent schools often intentionally opt out of any type of engagement. That’s what happened to me 22 years ago at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School (MA)—after graduating, I never heard from BB&N again, nor did I bother to update my contact information. I was one of the “lost” contacts—alumni who BB&N didn’t have contact information for—until 2018 when I met BB&N’s new head of school, Jennifer Price, during her first-year listening tour that made a stop in Washington, D.C.
 
Price listened to my story about my experience as a student and as an alum, told me about her vision to create a more inclusive school community that fosters greater belonging, and acknowledged there was much relationship repair that needed to be done. Her authenticity, sincerity, and the actionable steps that she outlined the school would be taking toward equity and justice left me with a sense of hopefulness. During the summer of 2018, immediately after she was hired, Price hired a special assistant to the head of school for equity and inclusion, recognizing early that diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) work could not be the sole responsibility of one person at the school. Shortly thereafter, she invited me to join BB&N’s Alumni/ae Council and encouraged my input. She earned my trust to give BB&N another chance and ultimately led me to take a closer look at the structures that have kept alumni of color away from the school. In 2018, I joined the council.
 
As schools everywhere quickly built infrastructure and developed capacity for educating students safely throughout a pandemic, I wondered “Where’s the same urgency and capacity-building for schools to begin to eradicate institutional and structural racism, which continues to champion white supremacist practices. So in September 2019, with the support of Price, I launched the Alumni/ae of Color Network (AoC) to amplify the narratives of BIPOC BB&N alumni, even if they were not interested in supporting or returning to the school. My vision was to provide the type of access and inheritance of networks that white people acquire—the ones that so often elude first-generation college graduates, immigrants, and anyone who isn’t white or wealthy. Through the AoC, this community of BIPOC alumni would hold the institution accountable for becoming anti-racist.

A Starting Point

At my first alumni/ae council leadership conference, I listened to quantitative data about overall advancement efforts and engagement with alumni. I learned that the demographic data of “lost” alum was unknown; because the demographic information for most of these alumni was never captured in the first place, there is no way to discern whether BIPOC alum are included. The lost voices matter and are needed, I told the council.
 
Many schools and advancement offices are in a similar situation. And many continue to accept and maintain this status quo without any critical analysis as to why. However, schools and advancements offices alike received a resounding why in the summer of 2020, with the more than 250 Black@ Instagram accounts detailing the racial trauma alumni had experienced within the halls of independent schools. Given my experience as a consultant and educator, as well as my positionality as a Black woman, I couldn’t reconcile why this ecosystem of complex power dynamics had never been disrupted. What decisions and actions reinforced the status quo, implicit bias, and current inequities in outreach strategies to BIPOC alum? And what alternative action could I take to produce different outcomes while supporting these alumni?
 
My goal was to create a transformative system that divests from whiteness and centers the needs of people who have been historically marginalized. I started by researching schools that were innovating in this space. At the time, Germantown Friends School (PA) was the only institution I found to be engaged in a similar framework of outreach with BIPOC alumni. It even has an alumni diversity manager and database administrator. As I imagined what the AoC would look like, I decided this work needed a grassroots foundation, operating autonomously and led by alumni of color.

The Approach

First, I enlisted the help of the chair and vice chair of the AoC, in partnership with the alumni programs office and the retiring director of multicultural services, Lewis Bryant, to spread the word about what began as an affinity group. Together, we invited BIPOC alumni to an inaugural event, hosted at a fellow alum’s restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 2019. Among the 20 attendees, a common thread in the narrative became apparent: BB&N’s BIPOC alumni were in search of community and did not want to hear from their alma mater only when it was time to donate money or attend a reunion. From this event, I started a basic database that included members’ contact information, location, and desired outcome(s) for joining AoC with the hope that it would grow exponentially with each event.
 
The AoC is a space to find community, reengage with peers and the broader BB&N community, lend a voice about experiences at BB&N, and help strategize and support the implementation of anti-racist/anti-oppression and restorative justice work at BB&N. The steering committee was created during the summer of 2020 after realizing AoC’s work would only be sustainable if we could increase bandwidth and outreach. There are currently eight steering committee members who decide and implement marketing strategy, serve as mentors, help plan events, and build relationships with different constituents in the community.
 
As I planned for the next event and the bigger picture, I thought about how the alumni groups at our school could work together and ensure that outreach is done through an equity lens. Professional development for the executive committee of the alumni council and alumni programs staff would be critical. In 2020–2021, I enlisted Jini Rae Sparkman, director of the office of equity and inclusion at Holderness School (NH), to lead the executive committee and alumni programs staff through several sessions of her workshop “Antiracism and the Institution.” The AoC steering committee’s professional development was centered on “Operationalizing Equity,” facilitated by Lawrence Alexander, a search consultant at Carney, Sandoe & Associates’ diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging practice. The professional development was held virtually during regularly scheduled meeting times. Now that we all had a mutual understanding and foundational knowledge of anti-racism, we were more confident and aligned about how to proceed with reimagining programs, policies, and practices.

In Action

Connection is at the core of the AoC, so I infused an affinity group with an entrepreneurial spirit and it has evolved into a social impact/justice organization that brings together more than 70 members spanning five decades and engages hundreds more. Volunteers have planned communitywide events, including ones in collaboration with BB&N’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and global education office (DEIG), such as “Centering BIPOC Voices: A Conversation with Angela Davis and Nikki Giovanni” and a Black History Month celebration, and we feature AoC members’ work in the community through our “AoC Spotlights.” The AoC has also partnered with BB&N’s DEIG office in launching a mentorship program with BIPOC alumni for current students of color. The AoC lives out its mission through these events by continuing to ampilify BIPOC narratives and fostering community.
 
Our most pressing challenges include preventing volunteer burnout—the hours required to manage an organization that has grown so quickly during a pandemic are plentiful. This school year, we are being mindful and creative about planning events and combatting Zoom fatigue. The AoC will focus on developing and formalizing internal processes and better defining committee members’ roles and responsibilities. This year’s plan includes safely hosting outdoor regional events outside of the metro Boston area, professional development, and continued relationship-building with BB&N’s parent, student, and faculty affinity groups.

The Takeaways

As we’ve worked to create a group in which BIPOC alumni feel safe to reconnect, participate, and contribute to our school, we’ve learned some lessons along the way.
 
Ask and answer the hard questions. How does your advancement office need to be restructured—not in preparation for another campaign but because the data reflects that outreach and relationship-building and repair is inadequate among alumni of color? Has your school diversified its advancement office staff? Do they receive anti-racist professional development on a consistent basis?
 
Data collection is an imperative and requires consistency. AoC is in constant outreach mode, but if racial and ethnic demographic data hasn’t been captured or is optional, then it is infinitely more difficult to reach out to alumni of color, especially after the five-year reunion demarcation when many alumni graduate college, start new jobs, relocate, and change email addresses. The flow of data should not be siloed but collected and shared among admission, DEIJ, and alumni programs. To do this, independent schools would benefit from having an institutional researcher and database manager who collaborate in reconciling the data and creating a system to capture it on a consistent basis.
 
Relationship repair and restorative justice are at the core. Advancement and senior administration teams have to develop the capacity to dismantle and reimagine their outreach strategies and conceive a healthier dynamic between private schools and alumni partnerships. All of the data they need is in their Black@ accounts—this work isn’t a glossy strategic plan or campaign but acknowledging the humanity in others that is disassociated from a dollar amount. It is essential that tough conversations with traumatized alumni continue, and the question must be asked: What does justice and repair look like
for them?
 
 

Read More

For more perspective on the importance of creating advancement efforts in which all community members feel they belong, check out these articles at nais.org. 
Milyna Phillips

Milyna Phillips is a diversity consultant, educator, and practitioner. She is the founding director of the Alumni/ae of Color Network at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is also BB&N’s Alumni/ae Council inclusion committee chair and executive committee member.