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Donor Organizers of the Year: Solidaire Network
Donor Organizers of the Year: Solidaire Network
Inside Philanthropy has named Solidaire Network the Donor Organizers of the Year in their 2022 Philanthropy Awards.
Donor Organizers of the Year: Solidaire Network
A decade into its work, this envelope-pushing progressive donor network has only gotten better at mobilizing money — even as it challenges the legitimacy of philanthropic wealth — and it’s on track to blow away its goal of moving $1 billion by 2029.
Inside Philanthropy is a digital publication covering grant making and charitable giving. Established in 2014 and are one of the top news outlets covering philanthropy. They reach 1.5 million readers per year including 55,000 subscribers to their newsletter. Their mission is to “To pull back the curtain on one of the most powerful and dynamic forces shaping society. Our team of editors, reporters and researchers dig into how foundations and major donors are giving away their money, and why.”
Read about all of the Inside Philanthropy 2022 Philanthropy Award winners here.
“It’s Not Just About Moving Money.” How Solidaire Is Challenging Wealth, Power and Privilege
“It’s Not Just About Moving Money.” How Solidaire Is Challenging Wealth, Power and Privilege
“It’s not just about moving money to front-line activists,” said Ingrid Benedict, the chair of Solidaire’s board of directors. “It’s about my own transformation around wealth, power and privilege.” Abigail Disney’s Daphne Foundation, for which Benedict serves as director, is an institutional Solidaire member.
Dawn Wolfe of Inside Philanthropy wrote an article featuring Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action. Wolfe tells the history of our network, shares our collective power to fund movements, and explores how we are pushing the field from philanthropy to wealth redistribution.
In a philanthrosphere that all too frequently sticks to its own status quo, the Solidaire Network seems to be a dynamic, risk-friendly organization willing to take on several things at once: moving money quickly to support urgent needs; providing enduring support to build the capacity of front-line nonprofits fighting for social change, and challenging wealth holders to go well beyond awarding grants or writing checks. Its model also seems to be increasingly attractive. The network’s membership has more than doubled in the past three years, from 122 in 2019 to 311 so far in 2022.
She interviews Solidaire Board members Sam Jacobs, Ingrid Benedict, and Executive Director Vini Bhansali.
Sam Jacobs, a Solidaire board member and one of its younger members, represents the latest wave of shifting attitudes toward inherited wealth. Jacobs, who is under 30, has garnered mainstream media coverage for his efforts to get control of his inherited wealth so he can give it away more quickly. Jacobs, who was in high school when the Occupy protests began, said that Solidaire’s staff of sharp organizers allow people like him to make meaningful contributions to social movements “without giving us the keys to the car,” by letting donors set the agenda for the nonprofits they support.
Anecdotes aren’t data, but Jacobs said that in his experience, he isn’t alone. “We’ve seen an increasing number of people say, ‘Look, I’m receiving an inheritance. I have this unearned wealth. I want to redistribute it; I want it to go to social movements,’” he said.
Younger wealth holders aren’t the only ones rethinking their relationship with money and privilege. Whether they’re individuals or institutions, young or old, Bhansali said that Solidaire’s members share similar attitudes about their wealth and what they should do with it. Solidaire members “see themselves as a participant in a social project that is trying to fundamentally end economic injustice.”
Read the full article, “It’s Not Just About Moving Money.” How Solidaire Is Challenging Wealth, Power and Privilege, here.
The New Rules of Old Money
The New Rules of Old Money
Nancy Jo Sales for Harper’s Bazaar wrote a feature article about the new face of philanthropy by connecting with Solidaire’s mother and daughter duos Amelie Ratliff and her daughter Casey Llewellyn and Susan Pritzker and her daughter Regan Pritzker. The article shows how their families giving has changed over the decades and their personal journeys:
“My mother is very much the reason I’m in this work,” says Llewellyn, referring to her own philanthropy. “She gave me access to my [inheritance] when I was 18 and recommended I reach out to Resource Generation”—a nonprofit organization founded in 1997 under the name Comfort Zone (it changed its name in 2000), which encourages people ages 18 to 35 to donate a large portion of their wealth to progressive causes. Since then, Llewellyn, who now lives in New York, says she has given away all but roughly 10 percent of her wealth to a variety of organizations dedicated to social justice and climate collapse. “I don’t think I’m a rich person anymore, and it feels much better. I think it’s very hard to have money in an ethical way.”
“Casey and I are allies in our work,” Ratliff says. “She pushes me. I’ve gone past where my parents were”—in terms of how much she gives away—“and she’s gone beyond where her mother is. Every wealthy person has to ask, How much is enough? How much do I really need, and how much do I want to make available more broadly?”
Solidaire members are candid about their evolution and where they think the philanthropic sector needs to grow:
“The influence Susan had on Regan as a philanthropist now came full circle when Regan introduced her mother to Solidaire. “I immediately felt this sense of ‘This is what I’ve been looking for,’” says Susan.
Solidaire’s emphasis on promoting the agency of “the people who are on the front lines doing the work of organizing” was important to Regan from the beginning. She says that after joining the group, she became more educated on how she could help shift the paradigm of giving.
“It’s been essential for me to be in relationships with people who are willing to speak more honestly to me about my wealth,” she says, “who say things to me like, ‘I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but we’re not going to let you off the hook either, and you need to step up. Don’t just write a check and go away. Get into the work with us, jump in and help us, and don’t let it come from your ego; let it come from your commitment to this vision of a transformed society where all people have enough and we can live in a right relationship with the planet.’”
The article includes Resource Generation, Kataly Foundation, and Solidaire Network:
“Solidaire is a network of donors who are committed to racial justice, to averting the climate crisis, and to making sure that we’re building a future that’s democratic, multiracial, feminist, and pluralistic,” says Rajasvini Bhansali, 46, the group’s executive director since 2018. “By becoming a Solidaire member, people consent to being in a collective project that liberates wealth and funds social movements, grassroots organizing, and what it will take to build a progressive force in the United States that’s lasting and not dependent on electoral cycles.”
Read the full article—The New Rules of Old Money —by clicking here.
Today’s racial justice movements need protection — and funders must respond
Today’s racial justice movements need protection — and funders must respond
Jesenia A. Santana, senior resource strategist at Solidaire, wrote an opinion piece for Candid to discuss how Solidaire supports racial justice movement leaders who are facing heightened levels of risk, trauma, and violence.
Solidaire listened to the calls of movement leaders who are experiencing vigilante and state violence and created a new funding vehicle to keep them safe.
Santana discusses the retaliation and mass arrests organizers in the Phoenix Metro area faced after Black Lives Matter protests:
“Like so many others across the country, members of Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro have organized and participated in numerous protests and public calls for racial justice in the past year. Their activism has kept a powerful spotlight on the harms and trauma caused by white supremacy and the need for healing and liberation for Black communities and other oppressed people. But that work has come at a great cost to the safety and security of people and organizations on the front lines.
Activists in Phoenix and elsewhere have experienced extensive harassment and serious threats to their safety from white nationalists, vigilantes, and police. During a May protest marking one year since the police killing of George Floyd, 124 people were arrested by Phoenix police without cause, with some undocumented participants chained at the wrist, waist, and ankles and turned over to federal immigration authorities for detention and possible deportation.”
Santana calls on philanthropy to be responsive to the changing landscape of digital and physical threats that grassroots organizers are facing:
“These are investments that do not fit into traditional funding models from philanthropy and government. And yet what could be more important to the success and sustainability of organizations and movements fighting for our collective liberation than the security and protection of their people?
The need for safety is immense. The people and groups on the front lines in the fight for our collective liberation are under threat. As funders committed to racial justice and movement building, let’s ask our nonprofit and movement partners what they need — and let’s commit together to support their efforts to keep themselves safe.”
Read the full article here.
How Solidaire is Funding Black Liberation—and What Other Funders Can Learn From It
How Solidaire is Funding Black Liberation—and What Other Funders Can Learn From It
Martha Ramirez at Inside Philanthropy recently sat down with Solidaire staff members Leigh Gaymon-Jones, movement partnerships and grantmaking practitioner, and Janis Rosheuvel, director of movement partnerships and grantmaking, to discuss the rise in funding for Black-led nonprofits and how philanthropy must go further to ensure that the movement has what it needs—now and for the long haul. They discuss Solidaire’s commitment to increasing support of Black-led racial justice work and its unique approach funding a wide range of issues and groups:
“We are not necessarily aiming to support a singular movement, but hoping to uplift an ecosystem of folks who are working to uplift the lives and futures of Black people… and therefore…uplift the liberation of all people,” said Leigh Gaymon-Jones, movement partnerships and grantmaking practitioner at Solidaire.
They also discuss what Black liberation means for Solidaire—and the intention behind not dictating to its grantees what that looks like:
“So much of how we work at Solidaire is about our movement partners defining the term for themselves and in their specific context and around the specific issues they work,” explained Rosheuvel.
Gaymon-Jones added that Solidaire wrestled with this issue. Is Solidaire as a philanthropic organization and institution positioned to define Black liberation? “I don’t think we are.”
“Through our grantmaking, we partner with many organizations, businesses, groups, collectives, cooperatives that are really rooting their work in a Black liberation framework, so in many ways, that’s being defined by each of those individual groups, and I think it’s appropriately reflective of the diversity of Black life and the Black experience.”
Gaymon-Jones described the Black Liberation Pooled Fund’s grants as no-strings-attached funding, meaning Solidaire is forgoing common grant practices like extensive reporting, quarterly check-ins, documentation, specific expectations of donor engagement or an expectation of a set number of site visits.
Gaymon-Jones added, “I really hope that this fund sparks imagination and creativity and possibilities, and offers the breathing room by offering multi-year funding, by offering general-ops funding; I really hope that it offers the breathing room for some really powerful work to emerge out of these organizations that were already doing really powerful work.”
As Rosheuvel says, for Solidaire, the hope is philanthropy as a whole can learn what it means to fund through deep and long-term partnerships:
“We’re doing the work internally to unburden and release wealth…I’m in solidarity with folks who are doing that and always strongly encouraging for that to be the standard rather than the exception.”
Read the full article—How Solidaire is Funding Black Liberation—and What Other Funders Can Learn From It —by clicking here.
How Funders, Intermediary Groups and Activists Are Working Together to Stop the Line 3 Pipeline
How Funders, Intermediary Groups and Activists Are Working Together to Stop the Line 3 Pipeline
In a May 14, 2021 Inside Philanthropy article by Michael Kavate, Solidaire is highlighted as one of the key funding intermediaries working to back Indigenous-led groups who are racing to stop the construction of the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline:
Running from Alberta to Lake Superior, Wisconsin, the completed pipeline would cross 337 miles of Minnesota, including lands and waters that many tribes rely on for hunting, fishing and harvesting wild rice. Enbridge, the Canadian company behind the project, bills it as a replacement of an existing 60-year old pipeline, but the project would effectively double the pipeline’s capacity, and one section takes a substantially different route through untouched lands.
Time is running out to stop the project—construction is on hold due to state law until the end of this month, but the pipeline is nearly completed. Activists are gearing up for large mobilizations in early June.
Solidaire board member Laura Flynn gets a special shoutout for her deep involvement in raising funds for frontline organizations:
Nearly everyone I spoke to about how philanthropy is responding to Line 3 mentioned Laura Flynn. Flynn, who lives in Minneapolis and is a donor herself…
Within Solidaire Network, a progressive donor group focused on social justice, Flynn has helped organize donors. Solidaire held a December call featuring four Indigenous women leaders that roughly 50 funders attended. It also does regular one-on-one calls. The network has also made grants to front-line Line 3 organizers “facing really heavy police surveillance” through its Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund, Flynn said.
Read the full article—How Funders, Intermediary Groups and Activists Are Working Together to Stop the Line 3 Pipeline—by clicking here.
Growth in Pooled Funds, Spurred by Racial-Justice Protests and the Pandemic, Could Last
Growth in Pooled Funds, Spurred by Racial-Justice Protests and the Pandemic, Could Last
In an article for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Solidaire’s executive director Rajasvini Bhansali shares how the Black Liberation Pooled Fund got its start and the growing interest in racial justice from big foundations:
In June, Bhansali began circulating a list of the network’s previous grantees in the “Black liberation ecosystem” for her group’s members to consider if they wanted to make a donation to support racial justice.
“We quickly realized that that spreadsheet was getting spread around philanthropy,” Bhansali says. “So it made sense for us to not just have this random spreadsheet floating around with contact information but give people a way to actually pool their resources.”
The spreadsheet evolved into the Black Liberation Pooled Fund. In the months that followed, members contributed about $800,000. In August, the Packard Foundation, which had not been active in racial-justice issues, made a $20 million, five-year commitment.
The Packard grant was a sign that philanthropy was undergoing a huge transformation, says Bhansali, and one of the big ways Solidaire could make a difference would be to help introduce other institutional philanthropies to the universe of racial-justice donors and nonprofits.
“Rather than being very cloistered and sort of exclusive, maybe we can make some of our knowledge base accessible so that other foundations can follow,” she says.
“Growth in Pooled Funds, Spurred by Racial-Justice Protests and the Pandemic, Could Last” by Alex Daniels, The Chronicle of Philanthropy / February 5, 2021
Read the full article here.