New equity arcata Structure - Effective Fall 2023

Equity arcata is currently going through a restructure. With this restructure, equity arcata will focus its efforts on three primary areas moving forward:

1. Seed funding for grassroots projects

Equity arcata will provide funding to support equity initiatives for community members who partner with one or more community-based affinity organizations, such as Black Humboldt or Humboldt Asians and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity (HAPI).

2. Collective impact within and across core organizations

Equity arcata will serve as a liaison to connect partner organizations to work on shared equity initiatives and systems change. This will strengthen our collective impact through a web of committed partner organizations who pledge to integrate equity work in transformation of inequitable structures and policies.

3. Convening

Equity arcata will strive to be a nimble organization with built in flexibility, bringing people and organizations together and support communication when events occur in our community that require public response and/or action. We will seek to provide support for collective response when asked.

Core Staff

Equity Leaders Team

Governing Board

In order to carry out the work in these areas, we will engage in a slight organizational restructuring toward BIPOC-centeredness, ongoing learning/continuous improvement, and increased accountability for the work across partner organizations grounded in collective impact. New structures will include:

Core Staff consists of:

A University-based co-coordinator
A City of Arcata-based co-coordinator
University and City-based interns/student equity fellows

Equity Leaders Team consist of:

Student Advisory Group for Equity (SAGE)
- A BIPOC-centered group of Student Equity Fellows (compensated) to advise on areas of priority for programming, ground the work as informants, assist to vet funding proposals, and help to inform our approaches as a network.
Working Leaders Group
- Partner organization BIPOC staff or key volunteer leaders within partner organizations responsible for systems transformation work.

The Governing Board consists of partner organizational leaders to take responsibility for and provide guidance on equity arcata policy and procedures, funding and other resources, hiring and retention, annual priorities, and longer-term planning. We are in the process of building a BIPOC-centered Board through continued service of existing partners and invitations to new partner organizations.