At International Bird Rescue, a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace is one where all employees and volunteers, whatever their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation, religious preference, ability, socioeconomic status, education, or identity feel valued and respected. We are committed to a nondiscriminatory approach and providing equal opportunity for employment and advancement in all our departments and programs, as well as our work at the wildlife centers, in the field, and during wildlife emergencies. We respect and value diverse life experiences and heritages and aim to ensure that all voices are valued and heard.

At International Bird Rescue, we are committed to modeling diversity and inclusion, and to maintaining an inclusive environment with equitable treatment for all.

In pursuit of these objectives, International Bird Rescue strives to:

• See diversity, inclusion, and equity as connected to our mission and critical to ensure the well-being of our staff, extended team, and the communities we serve.
• Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services, and continually update and report organization progress.
• Explore potential underlying, unquestioned assumptions that interfere with inclusiveness.
• Advocate for and support organization-wide thinking about how systemic inequities impact our organization’s work, and how best to address that in a way that is consistent with our mission.
• Practice and encourage transparent communication in all interactions.
• Commit time and resources to expand more diverse leadership within our board, staff, committees, and extended team.
• Lead with respect and tolerance. We expect all employees and all members of our extended team to embrace this notion, and to express it in workplace interactions and through everyday practices.

International Bird Rescue is committed to pursuing the following action items to help promote diversity and inclusion in our workplace:

Phase 1: 

• Conduct an audit of our current organization, to assess where we stand today on critical aspects of representation and diversity.
• Based on these findings, we will establish targets for diversity throughout the organization, at every level, and report annually on progress towards those targets.
• Establish an annual employee & volunteer survey, to hold ourselves accountable for creating a culture of equality and inclusivity.
• Establish employee & volunteer education opportunities, ideally led by external experts, for continued learning on critical topics of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, such as microaggressions, allyship, and practicing empathy.
• Re-evaluate our hiring and volunteer outreach strategies to ensure they are free from bias and consistent with this policy’s promise, and include a salary range with all public job descriptions.

Phase 2:

• Develop a system for being more intentional and conscious of bias during the hiring, promoting, or evaluating process. Train our hiring team on equitable practices.
• Improve our leadership pipeline by implementing strategies and policies that enable our leadership to more accurately reflect the diversity of the American society.
• Generate and aggregate quantitative and qualitative research related to equity
  to make incremental, measurable progress toward the visibility of our diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts. Once the content is curated it will be contributed to the larger effort to research and change diversity, equity, and inclusion in animal welfare organizations.

Updated: August 18, 2021