Philanthropy Will Not Save Us.
It’s been an incredible week at BALLE.
Last week, Courtney Martin wrote about our work in The New York Times.
As she makes clear, BALLE’s network of leaders work on many of America’s most difficult challenges — economic inequality, racial animosity, and rural vs. urban division. BALLE Fellows work tirelessly to create shared economic prosperity in communities adversely impacted by radical wealth inequality and environmental degradation, while leaders in our Foundation and Investors Circles work to align their investments with the needs and interests of their community.
Demonstrating how institutional philanthropy can better align with the needs and interests of our communities is the focus of #LiberatePhilanthropy, a brilliant blog series curated by our friends at Justice Funders to re-imagine and practice philanthropy free of its current constraints — the accumulation and privatization of wealth, and the centralization of power and control — to one that redistributes wealth, democratizes power and shifts economic control to communities. Justice Funders has shared stories from some of the most essential voices in philanthropy, including: Dana Kawaoka-Chen, Aaron Tanaka, Jennifer Astone, and Crystal Hayling.
Yesterday, our Executive Director, Rodney Foxworth, contributed to the series. In his post “Philanthropy Will Not Save Us,” Rodney raises the question:
“Can philanthropy be liberated to possess the moral will and urgency to roll the dice on communities best positioned to build an equitable and democratic economy in which philanthropy is no longer needed?”
At BALLE, we believe that investing in and following the leadership of communities that have been marginalized and extracted from by our existing economic paradigm is the surest bet that institutional philanthropy can make. In fact, as Rodney noted in the The New York Times:
The people and communities most adversely impacted by economic extraction and wealth inequality are resilient and have long innovated solutions to enduring systemic challenges. Now it’s time for policymakers, philanthropists and investors to follow their lead.
Read “Philanthropy Will Not Save Us” along with all of the phenomenal contributions to the #LiberatePhilanthropy series, so that you can find inspiration from some of the institutional philanthropies that are actively dismantling the status quo.
