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DEI Toolkit

New York State Office of Cultural Education

What is an affinity group?

An affinity group is a group of people linked by a common purpose, ideology, identity, or interest. Affinity Groups play a vital role in ensuring an inclusive environment where all are valued, included, and empowered to succeed.

Benefits

These groups are particularly beneficial when organizations and the people in them are working toward being more inclusive. Affinity groups can provide non-judgmental and secure opportunities for people to process their experiences, responses and reactions, and to make sense of what is going on around them and what they are learning. This is especially powerful when organizations or groups are working to manage and understand power differences within their community.

Convening an affinity group can yield substantial benefits for your organization including deeper understanding of stakeholders’ experiences, trust-building between your organization and hard to reach communities, and better communication and relationships between those with historical privilege and power, and those without.

Convening an Affinity Group

When your organization is ready to convene an affinity group or groups, consider:

  • Listen to the feedback your organization has received and align the development of affinity groups to that feedback. Are your Black colleagues feeling isolated or unheard? Are your Spanish-speaking patrons frustrated with a lack of translated materials? Does your organization have a high turnover of Black, Indigenous and other People of Color (BIPOC) staff? Does your Board predominantly represent one or two demographics, and they want to open executive volunteer leadership to a wider community? Has the disability community expressed a need for different or better accommodations? These are all excellent opportunities to 

    convene affinity groups based on feedback from your organization’s stakeholders.

  • Ask stakeholder groups if they are interested in participating in an affinity group.

  • Convene- or empower people to convene- affinity groups. Encourage these groups to decide on a purpose, and to create norms and agreements to guide their conversations and processes.

  • Resource the affinity groups. Resourcing includes providing physical or virtual space, paying for staff time, scheduling time on the Board calendar, etc.

  • Create feedback loops. Once your organization has convened and resourced affinity groups, determine how best to collect and listen to their feedback, and operationalize it.
  • Be flexible. Affinity groups form and reform as they are needed. They do not need to be long term, formal groups or committees. They are intended to meet a need by creating opportunities for difficult conversations best held in private, non- judgmental spaces.

Sources

Indeed. (2022). How to Start an Affinity Group at Work. Retrieved from: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-start-affinity-group-at-work

LinkedIn. (2021). 8 Things I Wish I’d Known When Creating an Affinity Group for People of Color at Work. Retrieved from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/8-things-i-wish-id- known-when-creating-affinity-group-villagomez/

The Muse. (2020). How to Start an Affinity Group at Work, According to Real People Who Did It. Retrieved from: https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-to-start-an-employee-resource-affinity-group-in-the-workplace

National Equity Project. (2023). The Three A’s: Alone, Affinity and Alliance Workshop. Retrieved from: https://www.nationalequityproject.org/training/racial-affinity-structures?gclid=Cj0KCQjwlPWgBhDHARIsAH2xdNcpjiff_B6V2T1TbFFUHd5ZxJa78jIb TRHJInYlnE5AeVGNmh_a_YgaAnTwEALw_wcB

Syracuse University. (2023). How to Establish an Affinity Group. Retrieved from: https://diversity.syr.edu/educational-training-programming/how-to-establish-an-affinity-group/