Exercises — Chapter 25: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Grant Writing

Work these with your own project and the communities it serves in mind. The aim is to move from describing equity to practicing it — and to write about it honestly, claiming only what you actually do.

How to use these: Part A checks recall; Part B applies the chapter to concrete equity decisions; Part C asks you to create at a real applicant's level (an equity statement, a power-sharing audit); Part M interleaves earlier chapters. Answers to selected exercises (★) are in the back matter.

Part A — Recall and Understand

A1. ★ State the chapter's threshold concept in your own words. What is the test that distinguishes authentic from performative equity?

A2. Distinguish equity from equality, with an example.

A3. What is performative equity, and how does it differ from authentic equity in terms of power?

A4. ★ What is the savior narrative, and what asset-based, agency-centered framing replaces it?

A5. Define: inclusion (NIH), community-based participatory research, positionality, cultural humility, lived experience, power-sharing.

A6. What does "nothing about us without us" mean, and how do you apply it as a design test?

A7. Why do authentic equity and effective program design tend to converge?

Part B — Apply

B1. ★ Authentic or performative? For each, decide and explain how to make it (more) authentic: - (a) A project designed entirely by outside staff, with one community member added to an advisory board for appearance. - (b) A program that employs people with lived experience in real leadership roles who shaped the design. - (c) A proposal that uses all the right equity terminology but keeps all decisions, money, and credit outside the community. - (d) A study that pays community co-designers and disaggregates outcomes by the most-barriered groups.

B2. Equity vs. equality. For a program you know, describe what an equality approach and an equity approach would each look like, and why the equity approach better serves the most-barriered participants.

B3. ★ Fix the savior narrative. Rewrite this into asset-based, agency-centered framing: "These vulnerable, struggling people have no hope without our program to save them."

B4. Disaggregate. A program reports a strong average outcome. Why might that hide an equity failure, and what would you measure instead?

B5. Resource the power-sharing. A proposal claims the community "co-designed" the project, but the budget shows no compensation for community partners. What does a discerning reviewer infer, and what should the applicant do?

Part C — Analyze and Create

C1. ★ Write your equity/inclusion statement. Using the Section 25.6 checkpoint, draft a statement grounded in your real context: the specific population and barriers (asset-based), your actual community involvement (honest), your funder's current requirements, savior-narrative check, and central-vs-cross-cutting placement. This goes in your "My Proposal" document.

C2. Power-sharing audit. Honestly audit your project: who designed it, who decides, who holds the money, whose knowledge shaped it, who leads, who benefits, who gets credit? Name two concrete changes that would genuinely shift power toward the affected community.

C3. ★ Design a community-engaged element. For your project, design one genuine power-sharing element (a participatory design process, lived-experience leadership roles, a real community decision-making structure) — specifying real influence, not token validation — and how you'd resource it.

C4. Specific over generic. Take a generic equity sentence ("we value diversity and inclusion") and rewrite it into specific barriers, populations, and design responses for your real project.

C5. Equitable outcomes. Design an outcome-measurement plan for your project that's attentive to equity: what you'll disaggregate, how you'll know whether the most-barriered participants benefited, and how that connects to your evaluation plan (Chapter 10).

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Review

M1. ★ (Ch 24 + 25) Connect the AI chapter's accountability/authenticity principle to authentic-vs-performative equity. What's the shared discipline?

M2. (Ch 17 + 25) How does the NSF Broader Impacts emphasis on broadening participation relate to this chapter's equity principles? What makes a broadening-participation plan genuine rather than token?

M3. ★ (Ch 21 + 25) How does localization / local leadership express the same idea as the authentic-equity threshold? Compare the two.

M4. (Ch 8 + 25) How does asset-based framing change how you write a needs/significance section without weakening the case for need?

M5. (Ch 10 + 25) How does designing equitable, disaggregated outcome measures strengthen both your equity practice and your evaluation plan?

M6. (Ch 16 + 25) How is the NIH inclusion requirement simultaneously an equity principle and a rigor principle? Use the history behind it.

🪞 Metacognitive check-in. The power-sharing audit (C2) may have surfaced uncomfortable answers about who really controls your "equity" work. Sit with that rather than reaching for better words to cover it. The discomfort is the signal that there's real work to do — and the applicants who let it guide them toward genuinely sharing power are the ones doing equity that's real. Authenticity doesn't require perfection; it requires honesty and genuine movement. Where are you, honestly, and where are you moving?