One of the things that 2020 has proven beyond a doubt is that in order to create a more just and equitable society, every business has a responsibility to do anti-racist work and to lift up BIPOC voices. The COVID-19 pandemic and the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many others have kicked off a civil rights movement unlike anything we’ve seen in decades. People around the world have been mobilized to speak up and work towards meaningful change. Many of us have been using the last few months to assess how our own actions can make an impact and find areas in our day-to-day lives for meaningful change.

At Indiegogo, we’ve been asking ourselves hard questions about how we can do more to foster a diverse and inclusive landscape. Crowdfunding opens avenues for funding outside of venture capitalism, giving entrepreneurs from all backgrounds a chance to build a groundbreaking business. That’s revolutionary in a world where VCs still give the majority of their money to white men. Indiegogo continues to highlight the Black entrepreneurs in our community, showcasing their work and stories on our blog, newsletters, and social media for the rest of the world to celebrate.

Our work needs to go beyond amplifying the Black-founded campaigns on our platform. It also needs to involve assessing and sharing who works at Indiegogo and publicly discussing our commitment to creating a more inclusive team. The group that builds Indiegogo need to be just as diverse as the group that uses it. As such, we’ve worked hard to build a diverse and equitable team.

How diversity has evolved at Indiegogo

We’ve published D+I annual reports for several years, and you can check out our blog posts from 2018 and 2019 to see our most recent past reports. Here’s a quick summary of what this year’s numbers reveal:

• We saw greater ethnic diversity than past years, particularly with more representation by Asian employees and those that selected two or more races (“Other”)
• Ethnic diversity increased for technical roles in particular. Only a quarter of technical roles at Indiegogo are held by white employees.
• Our leadership team has gotten more ethnically diverse over the last two years as well. In 2018, our leadership team was only 27% non-white. Now, it’s 43%.
• Indiegogo remains roughly evenly split by gender, both company wide and in leadership roles.

Company-wide diversity initiatives

We try to live our values at Indiegogo by taking part in programs and initiatives year-round. This summer, we participated as a company in helping the Boston Public Library to transcribe its collection of 19th century handwritten anti-slavery manuscripts into formats that can be more easily be searched by students and teachers. 

This fall, we are partnering with Georgetown University’s Leaders in Education About Diversity (LEAD) program to facilitate D+I sessions and help its students gain more overall experience facilitating diversity workshops. Companies work with students on campus to promote open interaction and dialogue among people with diverse social identities

And last March, just before the pandemic, we were a participant and sponsor at the March 4 Women Impact Tech event. Women Impact Tech aligns top women in tech with companies who are committed to inclusion and innovation. Centered as a celebration of women in tech, attendees get a chance to network with companies and other female engineers working on cutting edge technology.

To ensure that Indiegogo employees feel empowered to have their voices heard, anyone from any role can volunteer to lead our weekly company-wide standups. Any employee can contribute to the agenda and give a presentation, so that all voices are heard. Our performance reviews are standardized and values-based to certify that employees are treated equitably. 

What we’re doing for diversity going forward

Indiegogo has work to do, and we’re committed to improving diversity within the company to ensure that our team looks the community we serve.

“We continue to be committed to having a strong, intentional, and diverse hiring process. As such, we will place a great emphasis on diversifying our candidate pipeline by working with local organizations that connect us with talented individuals from underrepresented backgrounds,” says Haley Nagle, Director of Human Resources at Indiegogo. “We will also be reinvigorating our own internal referral program which has brought some unbelievable talent to the company and has been a key driver in making our team more inclusive and diverse.”

Indiegogo is also working to ensure that diverse voices are being heard and amplified within the company, to make sure that all employees have a say in company direction and strategy. “We will be turning inward and focusing on further uplifting and representing people of color at Indiegogo in every aspect of what we do from learning and development to social responsibility initiatives and company events,” says Nagle.

We’re happy about the progress we’ve made in building a team as diverse as the world we live in, but we still have a lot of areas for improvement. We’re excited to share our updates again next year. And we want to hear ideas from you about how we can keep making Indiegogo an even more inclusive place to work. After all, the beauty of crowdfunding is that we’re building something bigger than ourselves, together.