Applications Open for the 2nd annual TU COP
The 2024 COP is an opportunity for participants to grow their TU "muscle," build relationships with other professionals across the U.S., and grapple with the challenges and opportunities with planning for, implementing, and evaluating TU.
Seed Collaborative and the Belonging Lab, in partnership with the Othering and Belonging Institute, are thrilled to offer the 2nd annual Targeted Universalism (TU) Community of Practice (COP) for people from government, NGOs, foundations, academia, B-corps, or social impact orgs who want to take a deep dive into understanding and implementing TU.
Targeted Universalism has been gaining traction over the past few years as an effective policy and program approach that combines the benefits of both targeted and universal policies. TU can help break through gridlock–including resistance to equity itself–and create new avenues for communities to solve complex problems and work towards a thriving future.
Targeted Universalism offers pathways to operationalize and increase belonging. TU supports the needs of the particular, while also attending to the universal and reminding us that we are all part of the same social fabric.
What are the goals of the COP?
"We do not have to be perfect to begin the TU approach; it's an iterative process. I first started the cohort thinking I would apply TU to a specific body of work. I'm now finding myself understanding how I can apply TU in almost every aspect of my work" –Sarah Holdener, Help Me Grow
The TU COP is designed to support the implementation of TU to address structural and systemic inequities while also advancing an affirmative vision and practice of belonging.
Together we will:
- Develop a working knowledge of the seven TU stages
- Strengthen understanding of the application of TU at organizations both internally (DEI, equity) and externally focused (mission, projects, programs)
- Learn about and discuss case studies of TU work in progress
- Practice and experience the 10 practice elements of TU, such as co-creation, shared leadership, consensus decision-making, measurement, and culture-making
- Nourish our humanity and build trust through “breakthrough” discussions, music, and meditation
- Build peer relationships
- Understand Belonging and Bridging as interrelated to TU
FAQs can be found here
Application to apply is here
Scholarship Application for Fee Reduction
For additional questions, email michelle@seedcollab.com.
Application deadline is July 30th, 2024.
How can TU help my organization?
"It has helped me to understand that belonging and compassion are not just "nice", but essential, measurable and take practice…" –Erica Lee, Restorative Justice Educator
"The most helpful aspects were the really hands-on, process-driven sessions. These included included cohort presentations on how they are working on implementing TU as well as the data collection presentation." –Ruedigar Matthes, Salt Lake City
There is a groundswell of multi-sector interest in the practice of TU and belonging, from hospitals and schools to local and federal government programs to advocacy groups and philanthropy. The appeal and promise of TU addresses some of the most pressing systemic challenges of our time -- including increasing division, breaking, and competition between groups -- by offering a process to care for our different needs and situatedness.
TU differs from typical approaches to equity.
Equity is often practiced as focusing on disparities, which can become a binary that looks at the most- and least-favored or -resourced groups, ignoring other groups, and setting the goal as what the most favored group has rather than a universal, affirmative outcome. Disparity-focused or "closing the gap" strategies can lead to pitting groups against each other, creating competition for scarce resources, and resentment. It can also fall into the trap of racial essentialism.
- TU, on the other hand, organizes around an outcomes-based, universal goal while developing strategies that look at structures, institutions, culture, and the situatedness of groups and individuals.
- TU focuses on the construction and situatedness of groups through data and disaggregated information and takes racially constructed outcomes and disparities seriously by looking at how they are constructed. Organizing around a universal goal can create common cause and social cohesion, while the targeted strategies recognize and address differences in situatedness, history, and opportunity.
- Importantly, TU thus accounts for issues affecting marginalized groups, including but not limited to race, gender, religion, and disability. TU is also valuable when there is broad consensus that there is a problem but disagreement on solutions. At its best, TU can expand care, power, and promote real reform -- which advances us towards a world of belonging.
Often called equity 2.0, TU is particularly effective around policy, programs, process, and design. As an operations and communications strategy, it is a sophisticated and practical process and philosophy that can advance us towards bridging and belonging.
Come join us if it's right for you and your organization.
The TU CoP is designed to advance justice, equity, and belonging through experiential learning, group dialogue and discovery, case studies, and curriculum materials.
TU CoP includes:
- Members will convene virtually for 2-hour sessions monthy over a 7-month learning journey (7 sessions)
- Access to 1-hour monthly office hours (7 sessions, optional)
- The opportunity to engage with small study group (optional)
- Individual coaching
- Shared materials, process flow charts, and curriculum
Duration: The program is September through April (with a December break)
Size: Space is limited to three cohorts of 25 participants each.
Cost: $5,000 per individual and fee reduction scholarships available
For more info:
- FAQs can be found here
- Application to apply is here
- Scholarship Application for Fee Reduction
- For additional questions, email michelle@seedcollab.com.
Application deadline is July 30th, 2024.
A Snapshot of the 2023 COP
"It was a refreshing and rejuvenating experience. I enjoyed the small groups, learning about the work of others, and building community…. This work is hard and heavy. Sometimes we need spaces that feed both heart and mind. The COP did this for me." –Dushaw Hockett, SPACEs
Last Fall 56 passionate and engaged people from the nonprofit, government, and philanthropic sectors became the first two Targeted Universalism (TU) Communities of Practice (COP). From big cities and small towns across the country, participants represented 14 states and gathered on Zoom over nine months.
Sharing wisdom, curiosity, and commitment to working for the social good, the participants represented a breadth of areas of engagement, including public health, early childhood, the environment, farming, housing, food security, youth development, mental health, community banking, DEI, restorative justice, judiciary, college enrollment, and higher education–all addressing aspects of cultural, structural, and systemic inequities.
About half the group had specific projects or goals in mind. Others sought to understand how to bring TU into their work, such as collaborating with their nonprofit and government clients and applying TU to communications, and to the program work within foundations.
Examples of Universal Goals included:
- Healthy food available to everyone in the state.
- Safe, affordable housing that meets the needs of everyone in our community.
- Emotional and psychological safety for all workers to 90%.
- All families with young children have access to essential services when they need them.
- Ensuring digital connectivity and access for all individuals in the county.
- All district high school students have support to enroll in college after graduation.
- Every employee working at the city health department feels like they belong.
The pilot year group co-created the COP with us and gave ongoing feedback, helping shape, improve, innovate and evolve the COP in real time. There was so much experience, richness, deep commitment, and talent in the room. We are honored to have been in (and continue to be in) community with these exceptional humans.
"Honestly, I feel less alone. TU creates a space that allows for defining the goal by centering humanity and it provides a positive foundation to build strategies. The power of TU is the apolitical, humanistic approach to holding the shared goal with an asset based lens which feels so much more generative and positive than how many social challenges are framed with a deficit lens. I was validated in some of the challenges of how TU takes time, and advocating for both resources and expanded timelines to co-create is critical. I appreciated all the ways we talked about bridging and some strategies folks are using in our heightened divisive political landscape. Measurement can be hard and qualitative data is really important and can often get overlooked - I appreciated how TU gives equal weight to qualitative data." –Christina-Mai Just, Utah’s Promise, United Way of Salt Lake
