Your DEI Communications Calendar

Did your organization acknowledge Black History Month (February)? Are you planning to say anything for International Women’s Day on March 8, LGBTQ+ Pride Month in June, or Disability Pride Month in July? Should you? If you do, what should you say?

Do a quick Google search, and you’ll find endless “Diversity Calendars'' with lists of monthly observances and holidays. (I just did a search for "Diversity calendar 2024" and it yielded 409 billion results -- many of which are unique from one another, and some of which average 10+ events per month.) Copy/pasting from one of these calendars is unlikely to help you design an effective communications strategy that furthers your DEI goals. So how do you decide which observances to write all-staff emails for? Which to make public statements about? Which to post about on your organization’s social media?

My clients frequently ask me for guidance on these kinds of questions, so I wrote a blog post last year to guide you through a process for deciding whether or not to say anything about any given history month, pride month, or holiday (and what to say about it). You can read that post here.

Here's a high-level preview of what you'll find:

It’s great to communicate about history/pride months and holidays when (and usually only when) all of the following are true:

✅ The person you’re tasking with drafting the communication is explicitly paid for doing so (i.e., it’s part of their job description) and is either a member of the group that celebrates or is being honored by the holiday/month or is working with a paid consultant who is a member of that group.

✅ Your organization is taking action around the month/day. (Action can come in a lot of forms: giving staff a paid day off, making sure the group in question is getting the benefits and compensation they need, offering a product/service that honors the month/day, etc.)

✅ You’re making it feasible for staff to observe the day/month in ways that are aligned with their cultural practices, and ensuring they have the information and resources they need to take advantage of the opportunity to do so.

✅ The holiday/month is relevant to your organization, and you’re operationalizing your support for the groups that observe or are honored by the month/holiday in the day-to-day systems that govern your organization.

For a more detailed explanation of each of the points above, please refer to last year’s more thorough post.

To make the best use of this guide, I recommend using it to develop your own annual communications calendar. Given your organization's unique function and culture, you might decide to have different holidays/months that you communicate about internally, externally, neither, or both. Having a clear decision-making framework that’s aligned with your organization's mission, values, and DEI strategy will make it a lot easier to proactively write these communications (or decide not to). It'll also come in handy for making necessarily reactive decisions around communicating about current events. 

Want help with this? Please reach out!