(Photo by iStock/jetcityimage)
We are living in reactionary times. For many funders and organizers, what once felt like steady, if hard, progress on economic and social justice goals now feels more like a stall halfway uphill and a desperate effort to prevent a downward slide. Facing one crisis or cruel act after another, it is easy to lose hope. But it’s important not to get so caught up in short-term challenges that we lose sight of our purpose and long-term goals.
As executive director of the Just Economy Institute, a fellowship and network for funders, community organizers, and social entrepreneurs, I get a preview of what’s happening on the ground. And I see growing communities of people creating and supporting initiatives that shift the flow of capital and power in significant ways. There’s a lot of work to do, and people are still doing it, with eyes wide open to the moment and focused on a better future.
To get a better sense of these opportunities and actions, I spoke with two influential funders about what they’re seeing and doing to advance economic justice now: Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation, and Deborah Frieze, founder of the Boston Impact Initiative and co-founder of the Unlock Ownership Fund.
Are We Doing Enough?
Nelson: There’s been talk about how people are not doing enough in this moment, but I actually see people doing a lot. I see people and communities divesting from the extractive economy and investing in regenerative economies. What are you seeing?
Frieze: I see people leaning in, coming together in coalitions exactly at the time when we need one another most. Examples include what the Freedom Economy, a coalition of investors and legal professionals, is doing to help impact investors navigate the current environment, and what Aunnie Patton Power is doing with the Innovative Finance Initiative, which is an effort to reimagine how capital is designed, deployed, and measured for impact, domestically and internationally. Finance people traditionally aren’t great about sharing what they know, but in these groups, people are being extraordinarily generous and transparent.
When Boston Impact Initiative hosted our cohort alumni gathering recently, there was a session with lawyers to talk about how to navigate racial justice investing in this moment. I appreciated what they said, which was to begin with an assessment of your own risk tolerance. If you are a low-risk-tolerant organization—for example, you have limited assets and capacity—then it makes sense to play defense. But if you’re a high-risk-tolerant organization, then consider going on offense. Double down on your commitment to building a just and equitable world. To me, that includes most foundations and donor-advised funds. Anybody who has already gotten their tax break ought to be on their front foot.
Agbo: First, recognize that what we are witnessing is manufactured chaos that is designed to suck time, energy, and attention, and to distract us from what we need to focus on. And typically, when I hear the critique that we’re not doing enough, there is an expectation that we should be reacting to what we see coming out of Washington, DC, right now.
I want to invite us to not focus so much on the megaphone that we’re hearing from the administration, and instead figure out what is our megaphone? What are we trying to give voice and vision to, and how are we resourcing communities to build beyond and outside of what’s coming out of Washington?
Our approach at Kataly is to stay the course and do our work. Unfortunately, we have seen some of our partners in philanthropy do what is referred to as complying in advance. Some funders are proactively starting to change their language to distance themselves from work related to diversity, equity, inclusion. To that, we say, hiding and distancing yourself will not save you. It’s through deep solidarity that we can protect ourselves and one another.
We recognize we need to provide more resources to support the safety and security of our grantee partners. We are less interested in talking loudly about our frustration with the administration because, frankly, they do not care. They are not lawful, and they are not interested in the way that they’re harming any particular community. We are more interested in how we can form solidarity with our peers in philanthropy who are committed to flowing their capital out to social movements.
My sense is that many will rise to the occasion. I think those that will struggle are those that move from a place of fear or from a place of deep attachment to systems of oppression like patriarchy, heteronormativity, capitalism, racism, all those things. And I think those that really lean into deep human connection and interdependence will actually fly. The strength in numbers is actually what will sustain us through this moment, materially but also emotionally and spiritually.
Effective Action
Nelson: What’s working on the ground in communities? Are there particular approaches that you see as especially promising?
Agbo: We have found that land-based projects, particularly in this moment, are able to sustain communities. Access to land gives you the ability to provide shelter, to provide housing, to provide food, to provide places of safety and refuge.
We also support a number of climate justice organizations that are creating community-governed initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thinking creatively about how communities can build their ability to protect and care for one another during climate disasters. That work has been deeply moving and exciting.
I also think of the work of Konda Mason and Jubilee Justice, which is helping Black rice farmers to reground in their own farming practices and in their relationship to land through a cooperative model for producing and milling rice. There’s a lot of great work to resource that will actually sustain us.
Frieze: Right now, the approaches I find most compelling are rooted in the values of economic democracy—the idea that ownership and economic power should no longer be concentrated in the hands of the few. That means people are reorganizing workplaces to strengthen labor’s share of ownership and governance. They’re restructuring the ownership and stewardship of homes, commercial real estate, and land so that the people occupying those spaces build wealth and have a say about how development happens.
From an investment perspective, this might look like investing in worker-owned cooperatives, perpetual purpose trusts, community land trusts and mixed-income neighborhood trusts—which is exactly what we’re up to with the Unlock Ownership Fund.
Becoming Unstuck
Nelson: I know you’re both undaunted, but how has your perception of the opportunity for advancing economic justice changed?
Frieze: During the George Floyd protests in 2020, we were hosting Boston Impact Initiative’s first cohort of community-based investment funds focused on closing the racial wealth divide in their own communities. All of a sudden, there was a tremendous amount of support for their work, including early grants and investment pledges. As a cohort, we wondered where this was all going to lead. The optimists were saying, “This is it! This is the moment America is finally changing.” The pessimists were saying, “This moment is going to pass. We’ve got to take advantage of it while it’s here.”
The pessimists seem to have been right, unfortunately. A lot of lip service was paid to commitments to racial and economic justice, and that didn't stick. But here’s the thing: The shadow of the American economic order is now fully in the light. It is supremacist, and it is cruel. It doesn’t work for the vast majority of Americans, and now we have a choice to make. We have to decide if we care about one another. If we do care about one another, then we need to design a different economic system, one that includes all of us equally. And the great news is there are amazing examples of exactly how to do that in so many communities across this country.
Agbo: Part of what we are witnessing—at least in the United States context, but I think it goes for authoritarian regimes around the world—is the federal government being manipulated as another mechanism for extracting wealth out of communities and most taxpayers and putting it into the hands of private individuals and corporations through contracts and blatantly unethical deals. It can be demoralizing to think about what is at stake for our country and the world, particularly when we know there are very real material impacts on particularly vulnerable populations.
But rather than staying stuck in a demoralized place, I invite people to use this moment as an opportunity to think critically about what could be. If the public sector is not showing up for us in the way that it should or the way we’ve been told that it would, what opportunities are there for us to come together and support one another?
I think of the pandemic. Mutual aid is something that some communities have used for a very long time, but the pandemic was the first time we saw many communities rely on it—not at scale, but to some degree. They were turning to their neighbors to get access to food and personal protective equipment. Some of our grantees set up funds to provide individual cash payments to people who were losing work.
Now we’re asking: What does it look like to bring back those mutual aid networks? What does it look like to lean into community ownership and governance over assets as a way of providing housing and support to one another? And how do we articulate the vision of the world that we want outside of any particular election?
This could be one of those zero-gravity moments where we get to rearrange everything before everybody wakes up. It requires discipline. It requires focus and rigor. It requires us to be willing to build and create. And that I think is the opportunity inside of this crisis.
Read more stories by Deb Nelson, Nwamaka Agbo & Deborah Frieze.