Several years ago, I was talking with a consultant hired by my workplace to evaluate our diversity, equity and inclusion policies. I offhandedly mentioned that many people I knew in my personal life refused to use our services on principle because, to them, our nonprofit seemed to be another face of a violent, uncaring system. She looked at me in bewilderment and replied, “Wait, really?”

I am an openly trans, disabled and neurodivergent person, and a traditionally-initiated lay member of a deeply stigmatized African diasporic religion. Because of my background and lived experience, I’d mistakenly assumed that everyone was familiar with the perspective that nonprofits do not possess some inherently righteous or trustworthy character.

As a direct service provider working in a nonprofit, I’m also frustrated when organizations end up re-traumatizing people because employees haven’t been properly trained, especially when it comes to utilizing restorative justice techniques. This is, unfortunately, counter to the spirit of restorative justice, and we can do better. Nonprofits can be more inclusive, and we can all learn more about how to help our communities heal either by being more culturally responsive as facilitators in formal organizations or by helping community-based facilitators have easier access to our evidence-based, relevant skills training.

Understanding the conflict

When it comes to marginalized communities, there’s a historically justified suspicion of formal organizations. By “formal organizations,” I mean organizations that depend to some degree on a government system to operate. This could be by borrowing governmental authority to validate the organization (for example filing for tax-exempt status or seeking certification based on legally mandated criteria) or being beholden to financial stakeholders. After all, formal organizations, by definition, participate on some baseline level in a system that’s often harmful. And sometimes individual staff members perpetuate systemic bigotry in the way they provide direct service.

This means that community members with marginalized identities and experiences may not feel safe accessing information and training about domestic violence or mediation from a formal organization, let alone participating in services themselves. But if those community people are responsible for facilitating an accountability process within their own groups and they lack evidence-based knowledge, this can result in further harm. They might engage in victim-blaming, perpetuate common myths about domestic violence, or lack understanding about the impact of trauma.

On the other side of that coin, formal organizations are limited in what training they can provide because of funding restraints, being beholden to a system, or because of compassion fatigue among direct service staff who are overworked and underpaid. Outcomes can include gaps in needed services, more complicated or severe cases being turned away for lack of resources, or program policies and eligibility requirements that are unrealistic or culturally unresponsive.

How organizations can help

There are solutions that all groups using restorative justice approaches can implement to be more inclusive of marginalized communities. Whether you’re coming from a community group or a formal organization, my team has found these skills to be crucial for facilitating a successful restorative justice process:

• Basic mediation and group facilitation techniques, including familiarity with a variety of approaches to accommodate the individual parties’ culturally specific needs, disabilities, neurodivergence and individual experiences of trauma and/or oppression.
• Understanding of domestic violence dynamics, including how a person’s experience of marginalization can be weaponized against them or, alternatively, used as a shield to avoid accountability. 
• A foundation in peer counseling techniques, including how communication styles differ between groups of people and that no single communication style is appropriate for everyone.
• Logistical planning and scheduling skills that take into account the different ways people offer and receive information and technological barriers.
• Strong understanding of restorative justice principles and approaches. This should be shared among everyone involved in helping the process move forward so that everyone is participating with the same understanding.

The challenge is that community members trying to access all this information from reputable sources often get stopped in their tracks by paywalls, volunteerism requirements and basic logistical incompatibilities. So, if you’re a nonprofit employee, consider: How might you help break down the ‘silo’ so that evidence-based education flows more easily into your community? What can you do to ensure it flows toward those who need it most, who are often marginalized people with a lot of justifiable reasons to be skeptical about whether the legal system will provide safety or healing?

Consider factors such as scheduling and timing. For example, are trainings only ever offered on weekdays, when attendees might have to take time off work? By not scheduling during the Christmas season, are you instead scheduling on Jewish or Muslim or other holy days?

Also consider financial, practical and inclusivity factors. If you charge a training fee, can the fee be covered by another funding source? Can you alternate between in-person and virtual trainings so that people with different health and mobility needs have choices? Affordable childcare is a common barrier. So is safe, readily available bathroom access, especially for certain medical conditions, gender identities and physical disabilities regarding mobility. Do your educational materials use gender-neutral and inclusive language, or is the survivor always “she” and the person who caused harm always “he”? When marginalized people look at your organization’s staff and volunteers, do they see themselves reflected back?

Why it matters

Nonprofits should always seek to be more inclusive of the communities they aim to serve. I believe it’s also a matter of integrity when it comes to restorative justice. Restorative justice, in its contemporary form, came from Indigenous communities who couldn’t rely on the U.S. government for safety or justice. How can we claim to provide restorative justice processes if we don’t actively engage with the ways in which restorative justice is designed to criticize the very system from which our formal organizations operate?

And when we do engage with challenging ourselves and criticizing our governmental systems, the results can be wonderful. I came out publicly as trans some years ago and my workplace went through some growing pains to update its perspective and approach to services. Since then, Walnut Avenue has seen an increase in the number of LGBTQ+ volunteers as well as program participants. Because we reconsidered some of the aforementioned factors in when and how we offered our domestic violence certification training, and introduced additional education options, we’ve also seen greater diversity in race, gender and socioeconomic status of people participating in DV education.

This can be the power of the individual within a service organization; even better, the power of collective action in a service organization. Maybe I can’t personally stop the violence of government policies against my trans community, for example, but I can be part of the solution as to why Walnut Avenue is among the few places where a trans survivor of domestic violence wanting non-punitive justice can trust that they’ll receive the same level of care and dignity as a cisgender survivor. What walls might you be able to help knock down in your organization?

Marjorie Coffey (he/they) is an advocate for domestic violence survivors with Walnut Avenue Family & Women’s Center in Santa Cruz. In partnership with the Conflict Resolution Center, they are a co-coordinator for Space for Change, a restorative justice program focused on addressing the impact domestic violence can have on individuals and communities.