Deepening Workshops
The Values Gap: Moving from Symbolic Gestures to Lasting Transformation
Overview:
Declaring your organization diverse, welcoming, and just is the easy part. The real test comes when that commitment faces pressure, conflict, or crisis. Crossroads learned this the hard way. Good intentions weren’t enough. Symbolic gestures weren’t enough. What we needed was an honest examination of the values actually shaping our culture — because values don’t just sit in mission statements. They show up in how we handle conflict, who gets heard, and whether relationships across difference hold or fracture when things get hard. This workshop shares what we learned from our own reckoning and gives participants practical tools to do the same. You’ll learn to distinguish between values that look good on paper and values that can actually sustain your commitment when it’s tested — and identify which values in your organization are quietly getting in the way. Because the gap between who we say we are and how we actually operate is where transformation either begins — or dies.
This is a Foundational workshop designed to teach the core ideas behind Crossroads’ work. These workshops are designed for people who are new to this work, people who want a refresher on Crossroads’ approach, and groups who want to build a common understanding together. Although no prior experience with Crossroads is required, participants who have attended one or more of the following workshops will gain deeper insights from this session.
Workshop Outcomes:
Participants in Crossroads’ Values Gap workshop will deepen their capacity to:
Identify values that actively hinder change and damage relationships
Distinguish values that facilitate sustainable transformation and relational repair
Assess how their organization’s values perform under pressure or conflict
Examine their own institutional practices through a values-based lens
Develop strategies for aligning stated commitments with lived values
Workshop Delivery:
This workshop can be delivered in two ways: online (via Zoom) or in person.
It is interactive and uses several different ways of learning to keep participants engaged.
Meetings with your institution
The workshop includes a meeting before the session and a meeting after, so we can plan with your institution and follow up afterward.
Time commitment
When delivered in full, the workshop takes six hours total:
- 4.75 hours of facilitation and participant interaction
- 1.25 hours for breaks and lunch (non-contact time)
Flexible scheduling for online sessions
If delivered online, the workshop can be split into two sessions held on two consecutive days. For example: two morning sessions of about 3.5 hours each.
Workshop Fee:
Crossroads’ workshop fees are on a sliding scale, based on an organization’s budget. Here are the rates for the Values Gap workshop:
Equity Rate: $3,000 per day
(Annual budget less than $400,000)
Sustainer Rate: $4,500 per day
(Annual budget between $400,000 and $2 million)
Supporter Rate: $6,000 per day
(Annual budget between $2 million and $16.5 million)
Builder Rate: $7,500 per day
(Annual budget over $16.5 million)
The Default Setting: How Domination Quietly Wins in Justice Work
Overview:
Why do so many well-intentioned efforts for inclusion and belonging fall short? The answer isn’t lack of commitment. It’s lack of vision — specifically, the inability to see what’s operating beneath the surface. Systems of domination are so deeply woven into American life that they don’t announce themselves. They shape what we think, what we value, and what we believe is possible. They make exclusion feel normal. Discrimination feel natural. Hierarchy feel inevitable. And here’s what makes this so hard: we’ve all been shaped by these systems. Not because we’re bad people — but because we were never taught to question them. That’s why most inclusion efforts stay on the surface. Without understanding how domination systems operate, they end up accommodating the system rather than challenging it. Real transformation requires learning to see what we’ve been trained not to notice — and then doing something about it. This work isn’t comfortable. But our capacity to build truly just institutions depends entirely on our willingness to recognize and interrupt the domination default.
This is a deepening workshop designed to examine how institutional systems perpetuate inequality and provide focused exploration of specific justice topics—from analyzing dynamics of oppression to charting pathways toward reparation. While there’s no prerequisite, foundational workshop participants gain more from the material, as they bring shared analytical frameworks. Although no prior experience with Crossroads is required, participants who have attended one or more of the following workshops will gain deeper insights from this session:
Animating Antiracism as a Way of Being
Introduction to Antiracism or Introduction to Systemic Racism
Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism
Toward Liberation
Workshop Outcomes:
Participants in Crossroads’ Domination Default workshop will deepen their capacity to:
Identify patterns of domination thinking in institutions, culture, and personal beliefs
Understand and explain how interconnected belief systems sustain domination
Recognize how they’ve internalized messages that normalize inequality and hierarchy
Apply analytical tools to spot the domination default as it unfolds
Develop actionable strategies to interrupt and dismantle domination in their work and communities
Workshop Delivery:
This workshop can be delivered in two ways: online (via Zoom) or in person.
It is interactive and uses several different ways of learning to keep participants engaged.
Meetings with your institution
The workshop includes a meeting before the session and a meeting after, so we can plan with your institution and follow up afterward.
Time commitment
When delivered in full, the workshop takes six hours total:
4.75 hours of facilitation and participant interaction
1.25 hours for breaks and lunch (non-contact time)
Flexible scheduling for online sessions
If delivered online, the workshop can be split into two sessions held on two consecutive days. For example: two morning sessions of about 3.5 hours each.
Workshop Fee:
Crossroads’ workshop fees are on a sliding scale, based on an organization’s budget. Here are the rates for the Dominating White Ways workshop:
Equity Rate: $3,000
(Annual budget less than $400,000)
Sustainer Rate: $4,500
(Annual budget between $400,000 and $2 million)
Supporter Rate: $6,000
(Annual budget between $2 million and $16.5 million)
Builder Rate: $7,500
(Annual budget over $16.5 million)
Toward Liberation: Building Shared Analysis to Transform Institutions
Overview:
It’s hard to look at what’s happening in the United States and not ask “why.” Why, twenty-plus years into the 21st Century and seventy-plus years after legally mandated racial segregation was outlawed, are the ideas that justify racial discrimination and injustice still such a big part of our everyday reality? Why do these ideas still have so much power over our lives, culture, and institutions? Why does it seem so hard, given our history, to acknowledge the impact across generations? Why do we become defensive when faced with the call to repair historic harms and create a just society where all can flourish? And because we ask “why,” this workshop also asks “how.” How do we interrogate and disrupt narratives that limit the work to superficial actions as opposed to deep, transformative change? How do we intervene in the everyday interpersonal dynamics as well as in the systemic ones? How do we engage in formation that helps us to better challenge and dismantle injustice? How do we find a way to collective liberation?
Workshop Objectives:
This workshop builds upon the foundation of the Animating Antiracist Ways of Being workshop. Toward Liberation is an intensive workshop that designed to meet the following outcomes:
- Create a shared way of talking, about how the structures legitimizing a drive to dominate and systemic racism, evolved and work in the United States
- Understand how these structures affect how power is used in our institutions and in our collective life together
- Grapple with how these structures have shaped and misshaped our identities, so that we can be more effective antiracist collaborators
- Use tools, apply ideas, and have meaningful conversations with others, which will allow us to work together to reimagine institutions, as places that actively work toward liberation
Workshop Delivery:
Toward Liberation can be delivered as a three-day intensive workshop either in-person or digitally via Zoom. Toward Liberation can also be delivered as a 5-week digital workshop series via Zoom for online cohorts of 24-40 participants.
The digital workshop series includes 25 contact hours, which will guide participants through weekly Independent Learning in preparation for the Discussion and Deepening Session where Crossroads facilitators will assist in applying the shared analysis towards institutional growth and change.
We invite institutions to create a cohort of between 20 and 40 participants, including key stakeholders, to journey through the series together with an internal manager to help track and direct the cohort. When filling a cohort is not practical, we will create mixed institutional cohorts within a similar sector of work (PreK-12 Education, Religious Communities, Arts Organizations, Etc.). For both single and mixed institution cohorts, we will assist your team in selecting a three-hour time slot in the morning, afternoon, or evening.
Prerequisite Learning:
It is required that participants have previous experience engaging with Crossroads’ analysis of systemic racism by having participated in one or more of the following:
- Animating Antiracist Ways of Being workshop
- Introduction to Antiracism or Introduction to Systemic Racism workshop
- the former Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism workshop (pre-pandemic in-person)
Workshop Fee:
Crossroads’ workshop fees are on a sliding scale, based on an organization’s budget.
Equity Rate: $9,000 per workshop
(Annual budget less than $400,000)
Sustainer Rate: $14,000 per workshop
(Annual budget between $400,000 and $2 million)
Supporter Rate: $21,000 per workshop
(Annual budget between $2 million and $16.5 million)
Builder Rate: $30,000 per workshop
(Annual budget over $16.5 million)
Click here to learn more about our fees and sliding scale.
Informational Webinar:
Exploring and Interrupting Internalized Racism
Overview:
We are all shaped by racial messages—in media, institutions, and culture. These structures don’t just define policy; they get inside us, shaping what we notice, who we trust, and how we move through the world. In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois described what it means to measure one’s soul by the standards of a world that looks on with contempt—a “double-consciousness” that forces people of color to see themselves perpetually through the eyes of others. Decades later, Lillian Smith observed that this distortion imprisons everyone: the “warped, distorted frame” placed around every Black child from birth is also placed around every white child—each pinioned on a different side. What both described is internalized racism—and it remains one of the most underexamined barriers to building truly antiracist organizations.
This workshop explores: 1) How racialization and internalized racism sustain systems of domination, 2) How these dynamics show up within individuals, between racial groups, and inside organizations, and 3) Practical strategies for recognizing and interrupting these patterns in yourself and your work.
This is a deepening workshop designed to examine how institutional systems perpetuate inequality and provide focused exploration of specific justice topics—from analyzing dynamics of oppression to charting pathways toward reparation. This workshop builds on foundational concepts we explore in depth elsewhere. It is required that participants have previous experience engaging with Crossroads’ analysis of systemic racism by having participated in one or more of the following workshops:
Toward Liberation (in-person or digital)
Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism (the pre-2020 in-person)
Workshop Outcomes:
Participants in Crossroads’ Exploring and Interrupting Internalized Racism workshop will deepen their capacity to:
Understand how racism operates as a system: Move beyond individual prejudice to see how racialization creates and maintains power—and who benefits from keeping it in place.
Workshop Delivery:
This workshop can be delivered in two ways: online (via Zoom) or in person.
It is interactive and uses several different ways of learning to keep participants engaged.
Meetings with your institution
The workshop includes a meeting before the session and a meeting after, so we can plan with your institution and follow up afterward.
Time commitment
When delivered in full, the workshop takes 16 hours total split over two days:
6.5 hours of facilitation and participant interaction
1.5 hours for breaks and lunch (non-contact time)
Workshop Fee:
Crossroads’ workshop fees are on a sliding scale, based on an organization’s budget. Here are the rates for the Values Gap workshop:
Equity Rate: $3,000 per day
(Annual budget less than $400,000)
Sustainer Rate: $4,500 per day
(Annual budget between $400,000 and $2 million)
Supporter Rate: $6,000 per day
(Annual budget between $2 million and $16.5 million)
Builder Rate: $7,500 per day
(Annual budget over $16.5 million)
