About

Compensation isn’t just about pay—it’s about power, sustainability, and values. Compensation is one of the most complex—and consequential—decisions organizations make. Compensation is almost always the largest line item in an organization’s budget. And workplace conversations about money matters are invariably fraught.

Finally, compensation is a powerful tool to reduce wealth disparities. According to the Federal Reserve of Cleveland, reducing the racial income gap is the fastest way to reduce the racial wealth gap.

This site offers equity-centered leaders resources to design compensation systems that reflect your values; tools and frameworks that actually work in practice; and a guide to engaging your staff in shaping systems that are both equitable and sustainable.

Specifically, you can download resources that support you in understanding

  • How to align compensation practices with your organization’s equity values

  • Frameworks for evaluating and redesigning compensation systems

  • Tools to support transparency, fairness, and sustainability

  • Strategies to engage staff in shaping compensation approaches

  • How compensation connects to broader organizational systems and culture

The Equitable Compensation Toolkit: Organizational Resource is based on an approach created by Mala Nagarajan of Vega Mala Consulting (VMC), and refined by VMC’s collaborators, clients, and communities of practice. Money Matters: An Equitable Compensation & Money Discussion Guide is a resource developed by Richael Faithful with support from a number of collaborators. 

This site, the toolkit, and the discussion guide were funded with the generous support of the Borealis Philanthropy REACH grant.

Through Creative Commons licensing, we invite you to continue building on this approach with us and ask that you attribute all materials to the Equitable Compensation Toolkit: Organizational Resource and/or Money Matters: An Equitable Compensation & Money Discussion Guide.

While we want these materials to be widely disseminated and used, we ask that you only share what you download within your own organization. We do, however, welcome you sharing this website with colleagues who you think would benefit from our resources!

Bios

Richael Faithful

Esq., M.Div.

I’m an interdisciplinary culture worker whose roles in movement are multi-hyphenate and evolved for over 20 years.  My vocational work centers on crafting responses to complex questions related to collective and generational healing. I feel most alive in my work when I help generate pragmatic pathways toward liberatory futures. I rely on a wide set of skillsets and experiences within movement – from folk healer to system strategist – to be grounded and visionary in my approach.  

It was a privilege to put my attention to addressing how relationships with money show up in our movement spaces for over four years. I look forward to ongoing conversations with workers, leaders, experimenters, facilitators, and other culture workers about how we can continue to heal through, and transform beyond, racialized capitalism. I’m especially excited to advise organizations, groups, and funders who decide to use Money Matters or who want to support its use.

You can learn more about me and/or reach out for support at my Contact Page.

Senior HR Consultant

Mala Nagarajan

I’m a nonprofit strategist, social entrepreneur, and senior HR consultant that supports organizations in transforming the workplace and aligning their people and culture practices with their mission, values, and theory of change. I am driven by a vision of strong organizations working collaboratively toward a common social purpose. I work with organizations who want to be on the edge of innovation. 

I’ve focused my work on compensation because it's usually the biggest expense on an organization’s budget, has the biggest and most immediate impact on employees, and is a tool that can be used to reduce the racial wealth gap.

I’m an organizational development geek at heart, and I see my work as learning with you and providing you with adaptive capacity and an external perspective. As a thought partner and resource expert, I aim to increase your impact by improving your people and organizational systems. I work with strategic leaders who value building and sustaining the collective capacity of the people doing the work and who are committed to longer-term engagements that build a strong practice of deep reflection and learning, innovation, connection, and action into their organizational culture and DNA.

I’d love to have a conversation with you to see how I can support you!

If you are interested in learning more or working with us, please visit our Contact page.

Let’s Connect!

Have a question about the materials? Want to talk equitable compensation? Please fill out this quick form to connect.