Accountability Statement and Updates from the LC

Intro

We, the Leadership Circle of The Doula Project, currently a group of 10 volunteers who manage the day-to-day operations of programs, want to communicate our heartfelt wishes for everyone’s health and safety.  It’s been so much longer than any of us ever anticipated being apart. The Leadership Circle (LC) of The Doula Project (TDP) has been working hard to find ways to adapt to all of the challenges we all have been faced with, the viral pandemic as well as the racial and economic pandemics that have faced us for so long. This letter is meant to bring transparency to what has been going on in the leadership of TDP, to bring you up to date on what we have been working on, and to explain the reason for our lack of clear communication. 

Where We Are Now

First, we want to thank those who have continued to provide birth support to Doula Project clients during this challenging time, both virtually and in-person.  We hope that those who have not been able to provide birth or abortion doula support are still willing to consider participating in whatever plans the future may hold for TDP. We are also so grateful to our donors who continue to support us even through this difficult time. 

We have discussed the possibility of providing virtual abortion doula care, especially for pregnant people using the abortion pill. There are numerous challenges to setting this up, including the need to guarantee security for our doulas and clients when providing this service. As for our in-clinic abortion work, due to the coronavirus pandemic, we are still uncertain about future work with our partner clinics. We are glad that some of our birth work has been able to continue, however, we have not been able to meet the demands for those services.

We were approached by an amazing clinic in the Pittsburgh, PA area who wanted to train a group of birth doulas to do paid abortion doula support. In a short amount of time, we put together our first virtual training which turned out to be even more successful than anticipated. We finished the training feeling excited to try it again, despite our initial skepticism about the virtual format. 

We are now working on a possible virtual community training to be held some time before the end of this year. This training would be open to people from around the country who are not necessarily going to be directly involved in the work of TDP. It would be especially geared toward those wanting to initiate abortion doula support work in other locations around the country and abroad.

Despite the fact that it took us a long time to get it out, we worked hard to put together a strong anti-racist statement in support of Black Lives Matter. Our statement, in response to the series of racist murders by police and subsequent protests that have been occurring in this country, reflected the core values of TDP.

Many of us as individuals, as well as TDP’s Leadership Circle, signed on to support the staff of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York in their demands against PPGNY, and we want to continue to support their efforts. After much consideration, we have decided not to cut ties with the Planned Parenthood clinics. As a reproductive justice organization, we know that we are working within an imperfect system. However, PPGNY is the only not-for-profit abortion provider outside of hospital clinics in NYC, and we don’t want the clients they serve to be denied the important support we can provide. We continue to look forward to a not-too-distant future when the coronavirus is contained enough that it is safe for clients, staff and doulas to have TDP doulas providing in-person support again. However, the actions of the PPGNY staff and our deep conversations around the issues of racial and economic justice involved have motivated us to be more transparent about our own internal organizational struggles. It is in this spirit that we share the following history and current issues.

History

The Doula Project was established in 2007, and for several years provided services on a shoestring budget, with the founders doing most of the administrative work. As The Doula Project expanded, the Leadership Circle evolved to manage the day-to-day operations, make programmatic decisions, and recruit and train new doulas. The LC has always been non-hierarchical and has always used a consensus process to make decisions. 

As the Doula Project continued to grow, it was limited in its ability to access grant funds and larger individual donations without official nonprofit status. So, the LC made the decision to incorporate as a 501(c)(3), with all of the legal requirements that entailed, including creating a Board of Directors. When the LC created the Board, we intended that major fundraising by the Board could better support the programmatic decisions of the LC, as the LC continued to support the individual member doulas who are doing the work that is at the heart of The Doula Project and the very reason for its existence.

The LC has centered anti-oppression in our work over the past several years, and we have made sweeping changes to both our application process and our training. Our LC was historically composed of white, abled, cisgender women, and we are proud to say that we have welcomed new Black and Latinx individuals, disabled individuals, neurodivergent individuals, and queer, non-binary, and trans individuals to our leadership over the past several years. We have not seen the same commitment from our Board. 

LC’s Relationship to the Board

After holding our annual retreat in October of 2019, the LC proposed to TDP Board of Directors several budget changes in line with our goals for economic justice within the organization. We asked for an increase in both birth and abortion doula stipends, a paid internship, and an increase in the number of stipended positions on the LC (but no increase to the annual LC stipend). These increases were all aimed to support the sustainability of TDP, to train and retain an adequate cohort of doulas, to meet the direct service needs of our partner organizations, and to attract excellent interns who are able to fill the needs of TDP and would be equitably paid for their work. These requests were also in line with increases that the Board had committed to make gradually from 2017, since they were not able to make a more dramatic increase at that time. 

The Board did not approve any stipend increases for 2020, and before we could schedule a joint meeting, our Board chair joined us at our February meeting to deliver the following information: at the Board’s January meeting, and without consultation with the LC, the Board had voted to eliminate the LC by mid-2020. They planned to have a single part-time administrative assistant perform all the functions of the up-to 14 position LC, with the intention of moving to an all staff model of running TDP. They estimated this person would work 20 hours a week at minimum wage. Asking one part-time minimum wage worker to take on the jobs of a dozen volunteers is not economic justice.

When the Board made this decision without the LC, they did so without our more than 25 years of collective experience running the organization. Six of the Board members were brand new in 2020, and this was their first voting meeting. They had limited information about the organization and decided to end our service without understanding the full extent of the work that we do. None of our Board members have provided direct service with TDP and there is currently no worker representation on our Board. Only one Board member has attended a Doula Project training. Many Board members only serve a two-year term and may not be there to see any dramatic changes through. 

The members of the LC were stunned and outraged at the decision to remove the LC.  This decision was made with no input from those of us who had long been committed to the work and who carry such institutional knowledge. We immediately requested that there be a joint meeting to decide the organizational structure of TDP. 

The LC collectively works hundreds of hours a month. We maintain strong relationships with both our doulas and our clinics, have spent years working on our training model, and have worked tirelessly to continue providing and expanding our services. We are concerned not just with the economic justice of this issue, but also that this change would lead to the collapse of the organization. The Board has not communicated with us about why they made this decision as if it were an emergency; they have not explained how they plan to move forward without us. The proposal, in any similar form, is simply untenable. Put simply, it would likely mean the end of The Doula Project.

The LC reached consensus that we could not move forward with the Board’s plan. The Board was willing to meet with the LC at this point but only to “collaborate” on the staffing model they proposed. Subsequently, we received little-to-no information about the future plans. At this point in time, the pandemic hit and the LC acted to suspend all in-clinic doula support as of March 15th, and we notified the Board of our decision. In June, which was the original date for ending the LC, the Board temporarily suspended the elimination of the LC. 

As part of our work centering intersectional anti-oppression work, we have made sweeping changes to our structure and recruitment process, which has been reflected in the composition of our LC. As we mentioned in our history, we simply have not seen this same commitment from our Board. If we lose the LC, TDP will lose the anti-oppression values and progress that we have worked so hard on in the past several years. In fact, these recent actions from the Board point to signs of organizational white supremacy culture as outlined by Showing Up for Racial Justice here. 

Next Steps

The Board has recently stated that they anticipate the LC staying on “for the time being,” and has also agreed to schedule a joint meeting in the next month. We remain hopeful that we will come to an understanding that benefits and supports the work of the doulas, who are at the center of the work of The Doula Project. The LC continues to move forward on the assumption that we are here for the long term.  As mentioned above, we have been working hard to find ways to continue our clinic work remotely, and the LC has continued to work on operations and program planning.

We hope to give you continued updates as they unfold. We know that when we meet with the Board, there are many issues to discuss, including our anti-oppression mission, our organizational structure and how decisions are made, and how economic justice must be a part of the plan. We hope that this explains why we have sometimes been unable to commit to long term plans or been able to communicate clearly. If you have any questions or would like to communicate with the LC, please use our contact us form, or reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram.

-The Leadership Circle of The Doula Project, July 2020