Economic Justice

NPQ launched our economic justice program in July 2018. Our view is that economics is too important to be left to the economists. In doing our economic justice work, NPQ consciously operates with an intersectional lens, looking at the interrelationships between different social structures, including class, gender, and race. Our work is guided by our national economic justice advisory committee, whose members are listed below.

Here on our economic justice website, we include links to our regular economic justice column, Economy Remix and our Remaking the Economy webinar series. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve deepened our economic justice work with a focus on:

a) Documenting the impact of the economic crisis and public policy on communities and nonprofits.

b) Providing narrative lenses for understanding the scope and scale of the crisis.

c) Lifting up creative strategies, both short- and long-term, for community groups and philanthropy.

Some of the topics that Nonprofit Quarterly covers:

  • Community benefits:  This section looks at place-based nonprofit and public institutions like hospitals and universities and efforts to generate community benefits from their activities.
  • Economic democracy: This section highlights stories about democratic management of workplaces through such means as employee ownership and worker cooperatives.
  • Environmental justice: This section highlights stories that examine the intersection of the economy and the environment, especially in communities of color.
  • Fair finance:  This section lifts up stories about how to democratize the ownership of capital, such as through community development financial institutions.
  • Housing justice: This section focuses on tenant rights and mechanisms for ordinary people to own their homes through such means as cooperatives and resident-owned manufactured housing communities.
  • Land justice: This section highlights stories that look at ways communities can gain ownership and control over land, such as through community land trusts.
  • Poor people’s rights: This sections focuses on efforts for economic justice for low-income wokers, such as day laborer and domestic worker organizing.
  • Tax fairness:  This section looks at the tax code and both examines how the current tax system favors the wealthy, as well as attempts to develop a more just tax system.