#Metoo has us thinking about gender and gender diversity in the workplace.

This year we added a question to our Letter of Interest. We asked applicants to tell us about their board and staff diversity including, but not limited to, gender diversity.

In the non-profit community generally, women are very visible leaders, well-represented, even at the highest organizational leadership staff and board levels, especially when compared to the private sector. However, within the non-profit community, there are still many organizations actively working to improve their gender diversity. 

Oasis Free Clinics, a healthcare provider for uninsured residents in greater Brunswick and one of our current grantees, has been one of those organizations that has been slowly changing the gender diversity of its board and staff. We talked with Anita Ruff, Executive Director, and Shannon Banks, Board President, at Oasis Free Clinics to learn a little bit more about their experience as an organization that was founded by three physicians, all of them men (with one of those founders still very involved in the organization and currently serving his last term on the board). Since its inception, Oasis has had many part-time staff positions that were filled by women who worked as receptionists and office managers, as well as volunteer nurses, social workers and dental assistants. They were extremely well respected by the board, as well as by the large group of mostly male volunteer medical and dental providers. They very successfully implemented the decisions made mostly by men. Today, they play a role in the decision making, too.

Shannon Banks serves as Oasis Free Clinics' Board President, and she is also the only woman on a thirteen member Board.  Among the women staff currently working at Oasis, Anita is the first full-time Executive Director, the part-time Clinical Director is a woman, Oasis part-time dental assistant, part-time mental health coordinator, and all the office's support staff are women. Oasis has also recently added several more women providers to its volunteer pool of medical providers and dentists, and they would be thrilled by your inquiry if you are interested in their amazing work providing comprehensive medical and dental services to the low income, uninsured adults in the southern Midcoast area. Call 721-9277 or visit the volunteer page of their  website for more information on volunteer opportunities.   

In talking about Oasis Free Clinics' efforts to create more gender diversity and the Fund's efforts to create more geographic, class, racial and ethnic diversity on our own board and staff, we agreed one thing was vital: the need to be intentional, to literally create and then hold a place for your vision, until it comes into being, otherwise, it can be hard to overcome the natural momentum of what you've always done and how you've always done it.