“These organizations are generally predominantly white. Their boards are generally older white men,” said Shepard, who is Black. “They’re realizing that not only do those boards have to get younger, they have to get more diverse.”

A report released Wednesday by Green 2.0, an independent advocacy campaign that tracks racial and gender diversity within the environmental movement, found that while strides have been made in recent years, it has been at an incremental pace that begs for “improvement at all levels,” said Andrés Jimenez, the campaign’s executive director.

New data from about 40 of the largest nonprofit environmental organizations in the country and the top 40 foundations and grant providers show that, on average, these groups added six people of color and eight women to their full-time staff from 2017 to 2020, added two people of color and two women to their senior staff in that time, and one person of color and one woman to their boards since 2017.