CAMPAIGNS

National Campaigns

At Resource Generation, we have a vision of a world in which all communities are powerful, healthy, and living in alignment with the planet. We envision a racially and economically just world in which wealth, land, and power are shared, and we have developed a 40-Year Campaign Vision to guide us toward this goal.

Even if every member of RG redistributed all of their wealth today, it would not change the fundamentally unjust systems that allow for massive wealth accumulation. Campaign work is a way of trying to make shifts on a systems level. Campaigns are best done in deep collaboration, forged across various lines of difference such as race and class. They require us to let go of individualism and perfectionism and to instead practice showing up consistently to work towards a goal larger than ourselves. 

Young people with wealth can be valuable assets in campaigns. Policies, locally and nationally, are often written to protect the wealthy. There is value in telling our stories publicly and speaking out against things that are presumed to be in our self-interest. Finding our genuine stake and articulating why something that is not good for poor people is also not good for us, builds an awareness of our interdependence. Organizing our networks in order to leverage the power that we are in proximity to builds trust and can have real impact. Becoming donor organizers and moving resources to campaigns can help fund them to the scale they need to win. 

Philanthropy is not a tool that can lead to liberation. However, working strategically within the philanthropic institutions we have access to can make it easier for those leading systems campaigns to have what they need to thrive. For those of us with family foundations, we can not only become individually involved in campaign work but can help move our foundations towards funding more systems change work as well. All of us in RG can get trained on the skills needed to organize both our people and our money to dismantle systems that enable wealth hoarding. 

As part of our campaign efforts we:

  • Take collective action, in addition to individual action
  • Build lifelong, committed community organizers
  • Grow our base. Reach and politicize more young people on class privilege and redistribution
  • Fight for systemic changes that redistribute wealth 
  • Develop new skills together
  • Utilize the power of the most diverse and politically active generation in a century to make wealth hoarding a toxic thing of the past 
  • Show up as our full selves

National Campaign Partnerships: 

Since 2016, Resource Generation has forged partnerships with The Movement for Black Lives and Popular Democracy. We’ve worked to keep our relationship steady through uprisings and compounded crises. We believe we must be in relationship with and follow the leadership of organizations led by communities most directly impacted by the systems we aim to address. By doing so, we can collaboratively work towards transforming the economy to improve the lives of the majority. Our national campaign partners were selected through an accountable, transparent, and inclusive process led by members and staff. They were chosen because of the vital work they do, the many organizations their networks represent, the overlap in what cities RG and the campaign partners are based out of and their ability to lead local place based campaigns while also working on the national level.

Popular Democracy (PD) is a network organization that gathers 50 affiliates all over the country to build the internal capacity of these organizations. They organize together to win big policy fights on the local and national level. 

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a collective of 50+ organizations fighting for the liberation of all Black people under a common visionary agenda: the Movement for Black Lives Policy Platform. Representatives from these organizations join national tables (policy, organizing and base-building) to amplify what’s going on locally and to co-create a shared movement-wide strategy. Click here to learn more about the ecosystem. 

We invite RG members to give 10% of their overall giving to our Campaign Partners to help sustain the vital work they do. This isn’t just about money, though. Resourcing our campaign partners means redistributing power. When RG members support our national campaign partners, we also collaborate on local campaigns, organize our networks to support initiatives and make any pertinent connections we may in addition to collectivizing our giving!

Local Campaigns

Throughout history, the transfer of resources from the privileged few to the many has been won by mass movements led by working class people and people of color. As young people who are part of the top 10% of the economy with access to organized money, positional power, and organized people, we have a chance to join those movements and leverage all we’ve got to make sure they win. We dream of abolishing billionaires and making the ethical redistribution of land, wealth, and power inevitable – and we know we’ll get there through powerful cross-class local coalitions, partnerships, and issue-based campaigns. So far we’ve seen our chapters be part of major economic justice campaigns like fighting for and winning the Fair Share wealth tax in the state of Massachusetts and we are ready to win more. 

Taking action in a cross-class coalition requires skill and coordination. We are offering trainings and direct support for RG members via transformational campaign coaching with Emery Kiefer, our Local Power Organizer. Our RG Campaign Support program provides organizing infrastructure for RG Members through individual activist coaching, in-depth organizer training, and maintaining a connected community of organizers coordinated around a national strategy. We are here to move with our members, and provide all the training and resourcing to make it happen. Together, our RG Members learn how to:

  • Engage with local campaigns and our national campaign partners
  • Develop chapter-based campaign goals and strategic plans
  • Understand the mechanics of running a grassroots campaign
  • Learn key campaign skills like coalition building, making hard asks, public narrative, and more
  • Develop a strong power analysis as young people with wealth and understand when, where, and how to apply it in campaigns
  • Evaluate and tracking campaign success
  • Build the base of the chapter by inviting new members into the campaign

If you’re an RG member and are ready to win campaigns and build a local partnership, please contact our Local Power Organizer, Emery Kiefer at emery@resourcegeneration.org.