Why and how are we practicing “justice”?
MJN is super serious about embodying our values of loving care, justice, and solidarity in everything we do. At the most basic, we think that deep commitment to how we work and connect with one another right now — not merely what impact we seek in some future — is essential to justice. In today's language on justice, this partly falls into the category of procedural justice.
Designing practical systems that fully embody values is not easy, and a drastically overlooked area of innovation. In the end, most organizations seek to innovate in programs but retain certain business norms that limit potential. When nonprofits don't reflect values in their day-to-day, they end up with dehumanizing workplaces, inequitable pay that widens the wealth gap, and real harm to good people. “Good impact” is not a replacement for justice.
Early actions
We’ve volunteered thousands of hours to figure out how to govern, vote, and budget ethically. As we started on our journey, we did 4 things to make sure that values-alignment was taken seriously:
We tried to fundraise for it. So far, we've failed. Instead, we’ve committed thousands of volunteer hours to system innovation.
We spent, and continue to spend, time making sure we deeply understand what our values mean. Each of our values are defined so we imagine exactly what the world looks in which our values were the norm.
We described, and continue to refine, the design characteristics of systems in which our values are normal. For example, justice led us to 4 design characteristics: anti-bias, pro-Earth, decoupling wealth from power, and practicing democracy and circular leadership.
We designed our organizational structure to ensure that values were taken as seriously as programs:
System studio is our home for the development of structural innovations to line up our systems with our values, including in how we govern, pay, and organize. System projects include the Power Project and philosophies.
Venture studio is our home for ventures, like Into the Record and the Arisen. Ventures are like “programs,” designed to reflect our commitments to circular leadership. Programs apply system innovations. In a virtuous circle, we learn by doing and make sure to report back into our system studio teams to upgrade our philosophies as we learn.
As a collective that currently relies on a lot of volunteer work and is still learning how to fundraise, we plant in our values from the start to ensure that our systems can, in the long run, help us be better and live each day by what we believe.
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