Equity is Doable, Part 1: Fair Pay — A Blog Series by Ryan Adcock

Practical Steps Organizations Can Take to be More Equitable

At Cradle Cincinnati, we believe that if Cincinnati’s employers and service providers are more equitable, our birth outcomes will be more equitable too. Conversations about racial equity are often filled with academic jargon and can feel more philosophical than practical. This is the first in a series of posts where we will outline real life decisions Cradle Cincinnati is making in an attempt to grow into a more equitable organization.  

A colleague of mine, early in our team’s conversations on racial equity, told me “at the end of the day, equity usually comes down to dollars and cents.” I like being able to measure change, and this concept appealed to me because it was so darn quantitative. I also found it damning. Was I telling people that I saw value in them rather than showing them by doing the hard work of fighting to pay them more?

One of the things that keeps non-profit leaders up at night is budgeting. I am constantly worried about meeting our ambitious goals on a tight budget. My nightmare scenario is having to let people go because I couldn’t sustain funding for the work. This has led me to some pretty broken, fear-based thinking about our budget. I’ve often tried to keep salaries as competitive as possible in order to maximize my chances at keeping people employed for the long term. I know this kind of thinking isn’t rare – but I think it misses the bigger picture: the nightmare scenario isn’t running out of money; the nightmare scenario is not valuing the people on your team.

In 2016, we made our first move toward fair pay. In maternal and child health, the individuals at the bottom of the pay scale are often Community Health Workers. At the time, CHWs around the city made as little as $13/hour. So, we used our power as convener to ask all CHW agencies to align their pay with the City of Cincinnati’s Living Wage. This meant that $15.25/hour became the new minimum wage for CHWs in our community.

But, I still heard stories of CHWs struggling to make ends meet. And, in 2019, we learned that CHWs across Ohio make less than in most surrounding states. So, we leveraged a new contract with the Ohio Department of Medicaid to set a new standard of $18/hour.

Both of these changes met resistance. When an organization increases salaries, it of course creates challenges for that organization financially. But, if we collectively want to be striving for equity in birth outcomes, I remain convinced that investing in the mostly Black and mostly female workforce of community health workers is a smart move. One of the wonderful unintended consequences of these moves is that organizations, even after initial resistance, often made the decision to raise other employees’ salaries as they raised CHW salaries. Setting fair pay for one set of workers often has positive ripple effects throughout an organization.

We still have work to do. Looking at wages for the employees on our team who make the least is a great place to start. But we can’t stop there. Questions we are tackling right now at Cradle Cincinnati include: How diverse is our leadership team and how equitable are their salaries? What are the pathways for growth and promotion on our team? Are there external benchmarks that can help guide our decisions like we did with CHWs? No single change will get us there – working towards equity requires a relentless pursuit of improvement.

Ryan Adcock is the Executive Director of Cradle Cincinnati.