Shared Decision Making at Amplify
Over the last two years, Amplify has been working quietly and carefully to reevaluate our organizational structures and better align them with the principles of equity, accountability, and transparency. Like most work rooted in sharpening our inquiries into the imbalances of power, belonging, and justice in organizational hierarchies, this has been, and will continue to be, an ongoing and imperfect investment of intellectual and emotional labor. We believe that though sometimes messy, it is work worth doing.
More and more, our nonprofits resemble corporations. Executive directors are CEOs and top-down governance models supplant collective decision making and consensus building. Why do so many nonprofits gravitate toward the myth of individual exceptionalism rather than the possibility of collective liberation? As an organization working to support artists whose practices center racial, economic, and ecological justice, we acknowledge the incongruities of operating under a conventional top-down structure in which the hallmarks of white dominant culture–paternalism, competition, power hoarding, transactional relationships, etc.–are the norm.
Nonprofits don’t need to run like corporations. Period.
With a lot of hope for the future, and a deep commitment to lasting change, we’re excited to say that Amplify has shifted to a new, shared decision making structure. Thanks to the support of the artists with whom we work, our collaborators across the cultural sector, other nonprofits pursuing equitable organizational models, and our board members, Amplify is now a worker self-directed nonprofit with a completely horizontal shared leadership and pay structure.
This may be a new concept for some. Others will be familiar already, having gone through their own organizational transformations. At its core, this restructuring will help us better care for our artist communities, ourselves, and the longevity of the organization. We hope you’ll keep reading to find answers to some frequently asked questions about shared leadership. Please feel free to get in touch anytime if you have thoughts, questions, concerns, or if you’d like to work together and move closer toward organizational co-liberation with us!
What is shared decision making?
There are a lot of different interchangeable terms for shared decision making. Participatory governance, collective decision making, and liberatory democracy are just a few examples of descriptors that apply to our new organizational structure. You’ll probably hear us use all of them at some point. We’re working to embrace flexible, inclusive language to avoid getting bogged down in discussions over semantics that take time and energy away from our work of making more financial and critical support available to Omaha-area artists.
At the end of the day, shared decision making, and the other terms listed above, describe an organizational approach to self governance in which “all workers have the power to influence the programs in which they work, the conditions of their workplace, their own career paths, and the direction of the organization as a whole.” Amplify staff lead, influence, and support each other through collective decision making and consensus building approaches in which we all have equal input.
That’s not to say differences in opinions don’t arise. When they do, we work to center the principles of equity, transparency, and accountability to focus our decision making and guide the organization forward.
Why is shared decision making right for Amplify?
We know we aren’t the first to adopt a shared decision making structure. Hopefully, we won’t be the last! We also know that what works for Amplify might not work for other nonprofits. Context is everything. In the context of our organization with a small, dedicated staff of 2-3 workers, shared leadership has proven an effective tool for distributing responsibilities and balancing heavy workloads.
We made the decision to adopt a shared decision making structure after talking to representatives from other organizations working in a similar way and doing lots of reading and research. Here a few of the resources we found helpful:
Amplify also strives to situate the needs of Omaha’s artist communities at the core of everything we do. Shared leadership helps us stay responsive, adaptable, and flexible in our programming and operations.
What does shared decision making look like in practice?
Truthfully, the way we approach our day-to-day work hasn’t changed much. Since the beginning, Amplify has embraced shared decision making and participatory governance. It just took time to make it official.
We no longer have an executive director but a team of co-directors instead. Each co-director may have a focus area in which they invest more time and energy, but collectively we realize that all aspects of our organization, whether it be admin, programs, fundraising, communications, education, etc., interlock and mutually influence one another. That’s a big part of the reason we share organizational decision making responsibilities.
We believe peer accountability is key to cultivating conditions in which shared decision making grows and thrives. We check in with each other, support each other’s work, and keep each other on track. Since no one staff member has disproportionately larger decision making responsibility, we incentivize each other to fully participate in the work of ground level daily operations, visioning and organizational direction, and everything in between.
What does shared decision making have to do with equity?
When we think about the hallmarks of white dominant culture, individual exceptionalism, competition, and power hoarding tend to come in at the top of the list. We can trace the influence these traits have on conventional organizational hierarchies within the nonprofit sector back to top-down corporate structures that were modeled after military regiments.
As an organization striving to support artists whose practices engage in a broader movement toward racial, economic, and ecological justice, we know we have to walk the walk. Adopting a shared decision making structure helps us bring our organizational operations into alignment with our values and goal of becoming a more equitable, more accountable, and transparent organization.
We believe wage equity also plays a significant role in moving us closer to that goal. All Amplify staff members are compensated equally. Each one of us is paid the same salary. Like in every sector of the US economy, there’s a growing wage disparity in the arts, particularly in executive director salaries. Just take for example the $2.3 million annual salary Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) executive director takes home. That’s about 48 times what an education coordinator makes at the same nonprofit.
In sharing responsibility, Amplify staff also shares successes. We place the same compensatory value on all aspects of our work, whether that work involves building relationships with donors, working with artists, troubleshooting tech issues, or making our shared work space a clean, comfortable, and inviting place.
How do we hope shared decision making shapes the organization moving forward?
Our hope is that shared decision making, from a structural standpoint, will help the organization become more equitable, more accountable, and more transparent. We also hope to foster a human-centered work environment wherein all staff members feel equally valued, seen, and supported in their work.
We know there will be bumps in the road and we know that this is just a first step in an ongoing process of organizational co-liberation. In acknowledging there is still a lot of work left to do, we are continually learning from, and inspired by, others engaged in the process of questioning the imbalances of power, belonging, and justice engendered by conventional organizational hierarchies. For the next 12 months, staff at Amplify will participate in Collaborate to Co-Liberate: Structures and Practices for Democratic Organizations, a cohort learning journey to explore best practices and living models of liberatory organizational culture, structure, and practice.
We know that Amplify, on its own, can’t achieve the systems-level scale change we want to see. But we also know that by collaborating with other organizations working intentionally to accomplish the same goal, we move closer to co-creating a liberatory framework which unites us in solidarity and brings the pathway to meaningful, lasting change into clearer focus.