Improving Accessibility in Nonprofit Programming: Reflections From Our Grantee Listening Session

Nonprofit organizations and their staff are uniquely positioned to know what their constituents need, by nature of their direct engagement with their communities. At the same time, these organizations have a critical perspective on the larger contextualizing factors that inform why a community’s needs exist and how to meet them.

At the Onion Foundation, we value our nonprofit partners as expert collaborators in achieving our mission to build a more equitable and healthy Maine. We recognize the rich expertise and skills their teams possess as they work within a complex and under-resourced sector. As such, we place the utmost importance on listening to and learning from our grantees — about their experiences, the gaps in their work, and the support they require to meet community needs.

In October 2024, we put this value into practice by hosting a listening session with grantee organizations on accessibility and program accommodations for people living with disabilities. The session resulted in our learning about key efforts underway and support needed to enhance accessibility within the arts and environment fields.

Trending Toward Accessibility

Disability inclusion is an explicit strategic priority in our Environment Program, and a growing number of grantees in both the arts and environment areas have named accessibility as either a core component of their programs in grant proposals or as a missing aspect of community participation in their programming.

Yet, we’ve observed an uneven uptake of program accessibility among our grantees, especially as the most commonly available resources are geared toward achieving compliance with the infrastructure regulations outlined in the Americans With Disabilities Act. Many grantees are looking for ways to make their activities accessible beyond these foundational legal requirements.

Spurred by these trends, we invited grantees to share what they already do to include people with disabilities in their programming, what they aspire to do, and what obstacles they have encountered in pursuit of their goals. In response to our invitation, more than 160 people registered for the virtual conversation, demonstrating a deep interest in this topic. Most of these grantee partners reported that their organizations were making at least some efforts toward offering accommodations, but many lacked the resources to implement measures fully.

Through the listening session, we hoped to:

• Learn what support would be most helpful in developing more accessible programming

• Assess what our role as a foundation could be in this work

• Facilitate peer learning and connections

• Help establish baseline standards to lift the field as a whole

Listening as a Vehicle for Learning

We firmly believe that our grantee partners are most qualified to assess their own needs and identify the most successful solutions for meeting them. It was therefore crucial for our team to frame the listening session as a fact-finding mission, rather than a training or information session, and to respect our grantees’ knowledge and wisdom.

This model is particularly relevant for topics like disability inclusion, in which the people who programs are meant to serve are the experts about what they need and must be at the center of planning.

The listening session format also allowed for building connections among grantees, encouraging them to learn from each other and turn to each other as resources. This effect could only be achieved if grantees were given the space to share freely without “right” and “wrong” places to be along the journey of offering accommodations.

Key Approaches To Accessible Programming

To begin the listening session, we introduced our mission and values as a foundation, as well as some pertinent statistics about disability prevalence in Maine. Participants were interested to learn that around 31% of Mainers have a disability — higher than the national average. We then defined key terms to ensure all participants were on the same page, set expectations, and put grantee representatives who were less familiar with accessibility conversations at ease.

After laying these foundations, we sorted grantees into breakout groups based on their reported comfort levels with providing accommodations, which allowed for cross-sector conversation. Onion Foundation staff, board members, and Mollie Cashwell, the executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Maine, led groups through a series of questions:

• How were organizations already making accommodations for people living with disabilities?

• How did they know what accommodations to offer?

• What did success look like for them?

• What barriers had they encountered or were they continuing to encounter, and what did they think would help them surmount those barriers?

Throughout the discussions, participants shared helpful links and contacts, commiserated over common problems, and ideated about what could come next. Grantees articulated what coalesced into two approaches to offering program accommodations:

A Responsive Approach

With this approach, grantees field accommodation requests as they come up.

A Proactive Approach

With this approach, grantees solicit input from community members about their needs and build anticipated accommodations into their programming.

Grantees that were more comfortable orienting themselves toward the disability community were more likely to use a proactive approach, while grantees that were just beginning to think about the accommodations they might offer found themselves in the responsive camp.

Participants discussed tactics for moving toward a proactive approach, such as including accommodations as line items in their program budgets and funding applications; creating communication channels with community members; and fostering feedback processes to help organizations learn which accommodations worked and which didn’t.

Grantees already working proactively made it clear that, while planning for anticipated accommodations is key, having mechanisms in place to field and respond to in-the-moment needs is also crucial to fully accessible programming.

Accessibility Barriers and Opportunities

The listening session exposed a few common obstacles across grantee organizations. Some organizations were unsure how to begin offering accommodations, while others cited insufficient internal support for putting resources toward such initiatives. Some organizations articulated ways they were failing to serve the disability community and had previously identified potential courses of action, but lacked the financial resources needed to purchase special equipment, hire additional personnel, or train existing staff.

In other cases, barriers to accessible programming had institutional origins. Some organizations worked extensively with partners that didn’t share their commitment to accessibility, making it difficult to consistently offer accommodations. Other groups had examined how disability inclusion could factor into their programming, but were looking for more help developing internal policies that would support hiring staff with lived disability experience.

Benchmarking was another critical gap participants identified, with many organizations curious about how to measure success and ensure they were on the right track. And looming large throughout the listening session were the ways that disability intersects with other pervasive barriers to participation, like lack of transportation and language differences, which further complicated grantees’ efforts to include people with disabilities in their programming.

Despite facing these barriers, grantees also had much to share about achievements they had already realized and strategies their peers could replicate. When the session ended, both participants and the Onion Foundation staff came away energized and eager for follow up.

The Foundation’s Role in Expanding Accessible Programming

In reflecting on the outcomes of the meeting, we at the Onion Foundation began to consider our role in supporting our grantees as they experiment with increasing disability access to their programs. While grantees often start small — working within their existing constraints and making changes that don’t require large resource reallocations — they’ll eventually build capacity to a point at which they are likely to need additional support, specifically:

• Financial and technical assistance for meeting and adapting to individuals’ needs, including more staff and training in special skills

• Acquiring special equipment or services, like sound amplification tools or American Sign Language interpretation

Grantees expressed the desire for help identifying and connecting with partners to collaborate with on this work, specifically organizations with specialized expertise. Beyond offering financial support, the Onion Foundation can serve as a connecting point for collaboration and non-financial resources.

To that end, we’re taking three concrete and immediate actions following this listening session. First, we’ve begun compiling a list of resources, including local service providers; local, regional, and national model organizations; consultants and assistive technology gear libraries; and best practices and general learning resources. This list — to which our grantee community will add over time — can help people connect around the topics on which they need more support.

Next, we’re hosting an informal reconvening of listening-session attendees to hold space and time for continuing this work and building connections. Finally, we’re exploring the possibility of offering a disability inclusion learning journey for grantees via a cohort-style learning model.

These action steps wouldn’t be possible without our grantees’ vulnerability and commitment to growth. By sharing their experiences, needs, and aspirations, they are advancing the field toward disability inclusion and will continue to strengthen our efforts at the Onion Foundation for years to come.