Back in April, I received a couple of phone calls from my sister, Sonja, the current family philanthropy organizer at RG, urging me to attend the Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat in Petaluma. I didn’t give it much thought beyond my being busy with food justice conference organizing and questioning if a few days…
This letter to the editor was submitted to the NY Times at the end of last week. Sign on to a longer version of this letter at lettertothefuture.us. The Letter to the Future site will be updated soon with additional sponsors and information. Warren Buffett’s op-ed, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” struck a chord. As young philanthropists and…
My time interning at RG has been fulfilling both personally and professionally. Unlike other internships, my work at RG allowed me to be creative and take initiative of my own projects.One project I found particularly engaging was working to put RG’s book Classified on the web for download. Mike Gast gave me a copy my…
Me (Mike Gast, Co-Director of RG) asking myself a few of the questions I’ve been wanting to answer about my work and vision. Why wait! So why do you do the work that you do? What’s in it for you? I want a better life. I want a life that is full of close, loving…
Have you checked out the Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat report yet?The CCTFP Retreat is for young people who are engaged in their families’ philanthropy and are committed to social change.This year’s retreat took place in Petaluma, CA at the end of April. It was the 5th retreat of its kind. Full of vibrant…
Originally posted at GIFT Exchange. This month I am writing about what cori parrish at North Star Fund calls “the human side of donor programming.” Here I focus on progressive major donor programming, such as donor workshops and conferences. This is something I have experience with, having attended and helped to design programs and retreats at Resource…
We hold the liberation of Black and Indigenous people as central to the liberation of all people. We know that attempted genocide and chattel slavery created the initial foundation for massive wealth disparity in the U.S. and that the continued exploitation and criminalization of those communities upholds the racial wealth divide. We believe that well-resourced Black and Native Left organizing is a critical part of how we all get more free.
We believe social justice movements need to be led by communities most directly impacted by injustice. As young people with access to wealth, we choose to undermine the pattern of funders dictating the work and instead choose to follow the leadership of transformative social justice movements and communities, led by people who are: poor, working-class, Black, Indigenous, of color, women, disabled, queer and trans.
We work towards eradicating classism and towards wholeness. We believe that all classes and communities are interconnected and interdependent and that classism has been used to wedge and divide us. We know that much is lost communally in the name of wealth accumulation and that people with wealth have a lot to gain from returning wealth to the collective and transforming our economy. We know that the current economic system is untenable, and we work to build a solidarity economy.
We believe that people ages 18–35, with wealth and class privilege, are at a pivotal stage in life to make a lifelong commitment to social movements. Youth movements and organizing are, and have been bold and visionary. We are building on the legacy of those who came before us, and we are working for a better world for those who will come after. Young people with access to wealth and class privilege need to be organized as protagonists—actively engaging in and seeking out ways that leverage and redistribute our access to power and resources within our control, and redirect resources and power within the networks and institutions we are connected to. We are committed to resisting ageist norms of people acquiring power and holding on to it and constantly doing leadership development to bring about new leadership.
We believe personal and structural change are deeply connected, and every person has the ability to heal and grow. We are committed to working towards transforming ourselves, our organizations, our communities, and society as a whole through our work. We bring our full selves, our experiences, our stake, and our strategic thinking to build cross-class relationships in working for a just and livable world.
We believe in collective and individual growth, groundedness and interdependence. We know that tensions will arise, and we will approach these with curiosity on behalf of our personal and collective wants. We will work to see tensions as generative rather than destructive and finite. We welcome principled disagreement and will strive to keep conflict generative in service of our broader goals and mission.
We believe in the power of collaboration across class, race, and movements. We know that our vision depends on our relationships with communities, organizations and people across our movement ecosystem, with whom we share similarities and differences. Through our organizing work we also seek ways to invite our families, communities, and other people with access to wealth to this work.
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