My partner chaired a D&I board for a while. The amount of work she had to put in was astonishing.

She organised events, had to find speakers, find venues for said events, wrote internal SM posts, etc.

And this was all unpaid, effectively. There was no policy, no obligation to participate, no forced anything. It was just about creating space that can either accommodate discussions or promote awareness, or workshops to help some people be inspired, feel supported or encouraged. There were culture cafés, mentoring programs, etc.

Said company seems to have had a reduction in DEI efforts/positions, but that seems aligned with a general cost reduction, not because DEI was a failure.

(I do an exceptionally poor job of summarising what she did, but then again, I wasn’t directly involved in it).