Category: Announcements

Solidaire Network’s 10-Year Strategy is a roadmap to liberate wealth for movements to build lasting left power in the United States. Our new strategy was inspired by our 5-Year Retrospective 2018-2022 and Solidaire Action’s Movement Elder-in-Residence Linda Burnham’s Project2050. We embark on this strategic direction with internal rigor and the capacity to learn, innovate, grow, and transform.

Through donor organizing and social movements, we can transform our society so that every community has the resources to flourish. To redistribute stolen wealth and build systems where we care for one another, we must work together strategically and sustainably.

Solidaire Network 5-Year Retrospective 2018 – 2022

The Solidaire Network 5-Year Retrospective highlights how our network has grown and innovated between 2018 and 2022. We believe deeply in storytelling, and it is an honor to mirror these reflections of our collective back to you. This report celebrates how our network has grown, the infrastructure we have built, and the wealth redistributed

This interactive report shows our evolution in four sections our members, our movement partners, our culture, and our finance and investments. As we built genuine relationships, sharpened our analysis, and aligned our strategic purpose, our network expanded intentionally to liberate more wealth to movement formations at the frontlines of social justice.

Through data visualization and case studies, the 5-Year Retrospective tells the story of our growth in an easily digestible way. Engage with this report to understand key lessons in our donor organizing, grantmaking, and organizational culture.

The story of Solidaire is deeply rooted in the movements for social justice. We share the wins and struggles of our movement partners who are rallying movements to support underfunded frontline regions, facing emerging digital and physical security threats, and experimenting with restorative economics through land purchases.

We understand that our work is just getting started and will have critical impacts for years to come. Solidaire is working with an urgency that matches that of our movement partners to lay the foundation for a new vision of a future rooted in inclusion, equity, and justice.

Read Solidaire’s 5-Year Retrospective here.

With profound sorrow and love, the Solidaire team is sharing that the giant that is now our movement ancestor, Ravi Khanna, has passed on. We are taking the week to mourn collectively. We will continue to uplift his work and contribution to the movement.

Ravi Prasad Khanna, age 69, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his children and loved ones, after valiantly fighting squamous cell carcinoma. He was born in 1953, in Lucknow, India and moved to the United States in the late 1970s. He is survived by his wife Shirley, five beloved children – Anjali, Asha, Shyam, Quinn and Priya, and five grandchildren.

Throughout Ravi’s incredible life of service, he worked to uplift the voices of people most marginalized by those in power. His work included nurturing progressive philanthropy; organizing policy and advocacy campaigns; hosting a news and opinion website focused on amplifying the voices of activists from the Global South; and producing documentaries on the so-called “war on drugs”, stopping child labor, and disrupting corporate globalization. He also provided training for immigrant-led organizations; raised funds to support frontline organizing; and served as a philanthropic advisor.

In an illustrious career spanning five decades, Ravi worked with many social justice organizations including Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action, Centro Nacional de Comunicacion Social (D.F., Mexico), Grassroots International, Haymarket People’s Fund, Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia (D.F., Mexico), Oxfam America, Peace Development Fund, Resist, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, and Women’s Rights International. When not building grassroots power, Ravi could be found cooking, sampling new cuisines, planning travel adventures and enjoying quality time with his children and grandchildren.

Ravi was committed to operationalizing his core values of love, solidarity and interdependence as Solidaire’s Director of Finance and Operations, since 2018. He led the path to Solidaire Network becoming an independent 501 c3 organization, led our first audit and put into place justice-centered policies and practices that continue to grow a strong culture of care. Most recently, in his role as our Elder-in-Residence, he began to engage in research, documentation and conversations with movement elders to reflect on their life’s work and share key movement building lessons for intergenerational dialogue. He wanted us to honor and celebrate the many movement elders in the United States and from the Global South on whose shoulders we stand. We now consider Ravi one of our movement ancestors, guiding us in the next phase of our work for collective liberation.

 

Learning and Reflections Report: Evaluating our Theory of Liberation

We engaged independent professional evaluators to assess Solidaire’s progress in implementing our Theory of Liberation, a ten-year vision. They produced a Learning and Reflections report that offers a critical look at our progress and gives us valuable insights into potential paths ahead of us. View the interactive, digital Learning and Reflections report here.

The Solidaire Network Learning and Reflection process has been a true blessing to our organization. We set out to evaluate our progress against our 2019-2022 theory of liberation and we have accomplished that and so much more. Thank you to everyone who has supported this important process.

Through the insights of this report, we understand ourselves as bold and successful. We also understand ourselves as committed to learning, building, and fulfilling more and more of our freedom dreams. We take our role seriously, as critical protagonists in the racial, gender, and climate justice struggles of our times. We are committed to enhancing our strengths and addressing our growing edges.

We will not waver in this orientation until long-term progressive power in the United States is a reality. We are consistent, responsive and trustworthy. We are a trusted and powerful partner to movement organizations. We will continue to respond to these extraordinary times with extraordinary vision and rigor.

As we develop a refreshed strategic direction, we know that our work has only just gotten started. Thank you to our evaluative consultants, movement partners, members, board, and staff. You are each an indispensable part of this journey and propelling us forward.