WOC Writes Together: Returning to the Office?
By: Women of Color in Fundraising and Philanthropy (WOC)®
We asked the WOC Community how you’re all feeling as fall unfolds in your work situation. Are you heading back to the office in person? Have you worked out a remote only deal, or a hybrid mode? A number of you answered our call and there were many different responses. Let’s see how our members are faring…
“I previously worked for the foundation of a large university in the United States where the return to office plans started in May of 2021. I decided to leave and soon after, I landed an Associate Consultant position at GoalBusters Consulting, where I can work 100% remote and still continue to build my career and hone my focus on capital campaigns. At this point in my life global mobility, impact and organizational culture are the most important components to assessing opportunities moving forward.”
—Christy Carter
“My office is currently operating at 50% capacity, and this means that I am coming into the office once a week and working remotely for the other 4 days. I feel very lucky to have been able to work fully remote since March 2020, but it does feel nice to slowly reopen. Going in 1 day a week gives me a great balance and also forces me to get out of my apartment.”
—Megan Cerezo
“We are looking for flexibility more than anything. If the organization offers flexibility as well as opportunities for advancement, there is no limit to the loyalty she will extend to that employer long after the pandemic is over.”
“As an independent consultant, I worked from home before the pandemic with some in-person meetings with local clients. I’ve continued to work from home and have switched all my regular meetings to video conference. So far, my clients have not requested to switch back to in-person meetings so I plan to continue remote work this fall.”
—HuiWon Choi
“I am one of the lucky ones that have worked from a home office since prior to the pandemic. We know firsthand that working from home is not easier. It takes much more communication and efficiency. Employers should understand that offering a remote work option is not a complete fix for those of us who are mothers. As much stress that online school caused last fall, we are now sending our unvaccinated children to school with the threat of exposure, serious illness and quarantines hanging over our shoulders. We are looking for flexibility more than anything. If the organization offers flexibility as well as opportunities for advancement, there is no limit to the loyalty she will extend to that employer long after the pandemic is over.”
—Tanya Scott
“At this point in my life, global mobility, impact and organizational culture are the most important components to assessing opportunities moving forward.”
“I’m one of the lucky ones. I work at a small nonprofit where I am not one of a few BIPOC employees, most of our staff identify as such, so the emotional toll that the protests and police killings of unarmed POC, the election, insurrection, AND a pandemic, were not something I had to carry alone or explain to my colleagues as “the Black representative” in virtual work spaces. We extended grace to each other when the news cycle was too much to handle, we gave spaces to express our feelings at staff meetings, pitched in when a colleague needed it, and truly clung to each other as we figured out hosting 2 virtual benefits (2020 and 2021), virtual camp in 2020, returning to in-person camp with COVID protocols this summer, and onboarding new staff members working from home. My ED and Deputy ED are white women, and have been amazing allies before the pandemic, and were supportive of all of us as we navigated our individual challenges while still trying to operate our organization and be consistent for the youth and families we serve.
Our team was relatively well equipped to work from home from the outset; we all work off of laptops, and in a move to save money on leasing physical desk phones, my ED decided to have this new tech thing our IT company recommended, Zoom, become our phone system. We transitioned to Zoom for our phones in late January of 2020, and were excited that our program team would no longer need to share their personal cell numbers with families, they could just download the Zoom app and make calls from our work number, similar to using WhatsApp, and so long as we had internet access, we could receive work calls if we ever did need to work from home for the day. No more cumbersome forwarding programming of our desk phones! The functionality to do video calls seemed like a nice add-on, but nothing we thought we would use that extensively. It still blows my mind that we had no idea just how critical Zoom would become in our lives or in the delivery of services to youth and families, or to our fundraising efforts!
I honestly can’t wait to be back in the office. I live alone and the interaction with my coworkers has always been a highlight of my workday. The random conversations at the water cooler, popping into an office to brainstorm, sharing the news about a big donation with my ED in person, or walking to ‘Essen or Chipotle with a coworker for a chat as we got lunch. I took these moments for granted and wrote them off as very “regular degular.” The isolation of the quarantine was very hard for me in March of 2020. I had my own battle with COVID, and thankfully survived, but having to recuperate alone made the silence in my studio apartment deafening, and those at work interactions I never thought twice of before the pandemic seemed so far away. I missed them all. Zoom bridged the gap somewhat, but like so many of us, the in-person connection was what I really yearned for.
As part of the senior leadership team, I drafted our new work from home policy that will go into effect once we are out of our pandemic work from home situation, which will include allowing staff to work from home one day a week. We are still monitoring the Delta variant and while we hope to return to the office on 9/13, we will adjust our plans should the situation warrant it. As we work directly with youth ages 8-18, all staff were required to get a vaccine, so being around each other isn’t really the point of anxiety for most of us, it’s commuting to/from work on public transportation.”
—Melissa A. Benjamin
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