I was recently asked to speak to a captive audience on the subject of why I’m a “progressive funder.” I was more than happy to oblige, with one minor change: I preferred to answer the question of why I’m a radical activist who happens to have some money. Knowing that I’d likely ramble and run…
When I saw the tumblr site “We are the 1%. We stand with the 99%,” I thought about $140,050 sitting in a bank account in my name at the Permaculture Credit Union, money I’d received in distribution payments from my 5% share in an apartment complex. I questioned myself: How would I really be standing…
Often people refer to the Resource Generation “community,” roughly defined as young people with wealth who are committed to social justice and are connected on a national level through the RG network. In the past, I’ve found the use of this word a bit problematic and have been thinking about how we can truly claim…
In the last 18 days since the occupation of Wall Street, the Occupy movement has spread across the country. Boston, DC, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, and many other cities are now coming together to stand up as, for, and with the 99%. This includes many of the members of the Resource Generation community. We…
Several members of the Migrant Justice Solidarity Working Group (now renamed Hummingbird Collective) recently attended a fundraising training at RG’s New York office. The training was facilitated by grassroots fundraising smarties Yasmeen Perez and Emily Nepon, both of whom have been doing grassroots fundraising for over 10 years, and who have done this work professionally for FIERCE and Sylvia Rivera…
What is social change philanthropy? What do these broad and ambiguous words really mean? I was once under the assumption that “social change” excluded environmental or economic change. I saw the intrinsic connections, but because I’d grown accustomed to how philanthropy tends to cubbyhole and compartmentalize issues, I assumed that this was also the case….
After spending some time at the CCTFP conference, I was blown away by the young people I met. I got to know many participants and RG staff and was so impressed by their energy and commitment to social justice. I thought to myself: this is a serious group with a real commitment to gaining skills and getting involved in…
In June we are trying something a little different! In an effort to pare down the number of emails you receive from Resource Generation we have turned June’s monthly update into a blog post. It’s full of timely information on RG’s events, events from our partner organizations, and chapter details. In May, the MMMC Organizing…
Two RG’ers discuss grassroots fundraising and RG. Re-posted from Theo’s new column at GIFT Exchange, the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training’s blog. Greetings! This is my first official post to the GIFT blog and I am grateful and excited to be writing here. In this post, I interview Monica Raye Simpson about her experience with the GIFT…
When I started working on building a partnership between Social Justice Fund and the Seattle chapter of Resource Generation, I had no idea that we would end up raising $135,000 and transforming the way SJF makes grants. We moved forward with this partnership, called the Next Generation Giving Project, without knowing exactly how it would…
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.
Click here to continue to RG Action or click close to return to resourcegeneration.org