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Equity Guide for Nonprofit Technology Webinar
with Tristan Penn, Equity and Accountability Director at NTEN.
Why a 2025 technology equity guide for nonprofits?
Nonprofit technology is marked by inequities within our organizations and our sector.
You can see this in staffing and processes, and the way technology tools are implemented. Learn to use the free NTEN Equity Guide for Nonprofit Technology as an active and regular part of your strategy discussions and policy review processes and as a resource for evaluation.
Join Tristan Penn to learn how nonprofit staff can use technology strategically in racially equitable ways to meet our missions and community needs.
Worried about inherent bias and inequity built in to the technology your nonprofit uses?
Wondering how to implement strategies and frameworks to make sure your technology use aligns with your organizational values?
Navigating technology can be challenging for nonprofits, especially with the inequities in our sector. How can you use technology as strategically and equitably as possible to advance your mission?
Join Tristan Penn to learn about the NTEN Equity Guide for Nonprofits Technology. This session will explore how to use the NTEN Equity Guide as a key part of your strategy and policy reviews. You’ll learn how to implement technology in racially equitable ways to better meet community needs. Get a head start on building a more equitable tech future for your organization.
As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience.
Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic, and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.
Presenters:
Tristan Penn is the Equity and Accountability Director at NTEN, where he works to promote, coordinate, and evaluate best practices that support Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Liberation. His work focuses on equitable development and capacity building within the nonprofit sector. He manages a staff, community, and board-specific DEI Taskforce, creating long-term work plans and goals for equity initiatives both within NTEN and across the broader community.
In his role, Tristan supports and coaches conference speakers and course faculty on creating equitable presentations and manages an annual community survey to gather demographic data and assess customer satisfaction and goal alignment. He is also responsible for designing and implementing audit processes to evaluate the staff, board, and volunteer policies outlined in NTEN’s Equity Commitment, and for developing appropriate methodologies to measure the impact of NTEN’s equity efforts.
Carolyn Woodard is currently head of Marketing and Outreach at Community IT Innovators. She has served many roles at Community IT, from client to project manager to marketing. With over twenty-five years of experience in the nonprofit world, including as a nonprofit technology project manager and Director of IT at both large and small organizations, Carolyn knows the frustrations and delights of working with technology professionals, accidental techies, executives, and staff to deliver your organization’s mission and keep your IT infrastructure operating. She has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Johns Hopkins University and received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Williams College. She was happy to learn about this equity guide for nonprofit technology from Tristan Penn at long time Community IT partner NTEN.
Transcript coming soon
Reddit Discussion Q&A and Resources
Here is the Equity Guide link – free download from NTEN: https://www.nten.org/change/equity-guide-for-nonprofit-technology
Here is the companion “Tech 28” guide for nonprofit board members – what questions should you be asking about tech at the nonprofit as you provide leadership, guidance, risk assessment, and strategic planning? https://word.nten.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Tech-28.pdf
AI and Equity
Q: I’ll start with a big obvious one. Many nonprofits really started to worry more about equity in the IT tools they are using when AI hit the big time and disturbing revelations about bias/exclusion, power relationships, and the environmental and community impacts of data centers came to light.
How can nonprofit leaders and staff use this guide to tackle their relationship with AI tools?
A: Howdy! Tristan here 👋 – Great time presenting earlier and I love this question because it is so relevant and appropriate given the ever-growing influence and presence that AI has made in our work, overtly and covertly.
The beauty of this guide is that is truly broad enough to include basic tech tools, as well as advanced tools such as AI. Instead of getting incredibly specific, it instead guides nonprofit folks to ask questions and investigate the tool and what data and information they may be sharing with, say, and AI tool. This is where the guide really shines; Tech tools are always going to be doing exactly what they were built to do. It’s incumbent upon us as the potential user to make sure that we are cautious and prudent with what organizational data and information we are willing to share with whatever tool is being considered.
Next Steps to use the Equity Guide for Nonprofit Technology
Q: For staff members at nonprofits who have read this guide, what are some next steps you recommend? What are priorities or first steps to take to bring this topic to the attention of leadership?
A: I think a great first step is to find an element that spoke to you in the guide. Whether it is the staff professional development aspect, or the funding of tech aspect; find the element that feels like you know a LOT about. Start there. If one tries to overhaul everything at once, it makes for a very chaotic-spread-thin mindspace for whoever is trying to change things. One bite at a time.
Q: Examining nonprofit technology from an equity perspective is definitely a “nice” thing to do, but what makes it essential? Do you have any real-world stories of a nonprofit that used this guide to create a strategic advantage for themselves or the community they serve?
A: (Tristan) It is important because if there isn’t a focused and intentional examination/analysis of HOW we are implementing things, policies, practices, and tech then that leaves no room for any changing and altering of outdated policies, practices, and tech. And I don’t think anyone wants outdated tech in their catalog 🙂
Additionally, I think it is important because oftentimes when things get examined and altered/changed through the lens of equity, the greatest chance for staff satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, community member trust, and sector-wide reputation is at its highest; rising tides lift all ships.
A: (Carolyn) In the guide you talk a lot about planning for the strategic use of tech by your organization and for your mission. That helps you have a clear vision so that you can ask for and accept help that fits within your long-term goals, and – however painful – reject tech help that doesn’t fit within your goals because it will not improve equitable outcomes either around tech or in the communities you partner with.
At Community IT we have multiple examples of clients who were able to develop stronger, much more trust-based, relationships with funders through having a clear strategic plan for tech. During the pandemic we had a client who was able to pivot quickly to remote learning – and get funding for it – because they had already been planning for and supporting their students’ tech needs, had the strategic plan, and had partners in place like Community IT who their funders understood could deliver. Developing those long-term relationships around tech strengthen nonprofits’ ability to grow their mission around sustainable tech that supports them in more equitable ways.