Do you have organisational values? If not, these can be a really good way to ground everything that you do. If you do have values, how are these used? If they sit on your website or in a strategy document but do not live and breathe regularly then you should revisit why you created them.
When developing or reviewing your values consider how you genuinely embed inclusion, equity and anti-racism within those. This is important to sustainable food organisations as there cannot be a fair and just food system without racial and social justice. This may not be the work that you lead on, but it can intersect everything that you do. As a movement we have the ability to create meaningful change by addressing the structural imbalances and systems of oppression that our sector is built on.
Next consider, how do your values connect with employees (and others)?
A good way to test the waters with this is to lead a session with your team on their individual values and the organisation’s values. How many of them match up? How do they connect with the values in the organisation? How do your leaders lead with these values? If they don’t, why not?
Once you are confident in your values, you can demonstrate how the organisation lives them, either internally or publicly like the NSPCC has. These should be utilised during recruitment, training and induction.
Recommended resources:
- Charity Mission and Vision creation, Charity Excellence
- Leading with values: creating a safe organisational culture, ACEVO, 2019
- Re-imagining anti-racism as a core organisational value, Australian Journal of Management, 2023
- Setting your values as a charity – how and why it matters, Felicity Willow on LinkedIn
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