For Movements to Win, Organize People and Money

This article is part of NPQ’s series, Money in Movements: The Role of Donor Organizing. Co-produced with Solidaire Network, this series offers firsthand narratives from donor organizers deeply embedded in justice struggles to illuminate how individuals with wealth can authentically align with grassroots movements.

I believe in the abolition of private philanthropy. Not just the power that private foundations have over both capital and people, but the conditions that make philanthropy necessary in the first place.

That may sound strange coming from someone who has spent much of his professional life inside the philanthropic sector. But private philanthropy exists because wealth has been extracted, consolidated, and hoarded—often through violence, dispossession, and the erasure of collective systems of care. And it continues to exist in part because the state has failed to meet people’s basic needs.

Rather than trying to fix this system, we should bolster grassroots movements that are building democratic, community-controlled systems to meet those same needs. Rather than imagining a world in which private philanthropy finally works, I dream of a world in which private philanthropy is no longer needed.

I’ve spent the past two decades working to redistribute wealth—both my own and within the philanthropic sector. I was born into a high-net-wealth family, and for many years I struggled to reconcile that reality with my own political beliefs and commitments.

Over time, I came to understand that the question wasn’t just what to do with the money, but how to be accountable to the movements that have shaped my values and vision. The seeds of those values were planted early on by my parents, who came to the United States from Iran and Cuba, and who spoke often about imperialism, displacement, and the importance of community self-determination. This understanding has guided my work as a donor and funder organizer and as cofounder of Solidaire Network—a community of individual donors and institutional funders mobilizing resources in solidarity with movements. It has shaped my stewardship of the Chorus Foundation, where I spent down over $65 million of family wealth to support grassroots climate justice and just transition organizing.

This series is an invitation to reconsider the role that donor organizing specifically can play in liberatory movements. The four donor organizers featured in these pieces are not just trying to move money—they are building political homes and developing mechanisms of accountability to the communities leading transformative change. Their stories reflect years of behind-the-scenes work to bring people with wealth into deeper solidarity with liberatory movements. This series lifts up an often-overlooked dimension of movement organizing and highlights the people organizing individuals with wealth into solidarity with grassroots movements to bring us closer to collective liberation.

Donor Organizing Has Always Been Here

Donor and funder organizing has long played a quiet but crucial role in how movements grow and win. As Jenna Spagnolo shared in Organize the Rich, throughout history, people with access to wealth have been organized into liberatory movements—not as heroes, but as legitimate contributors to collective struggle. From the “Secret Six” who funded underground abolitionist printing presses and backed John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, to socialites who secretly funded the suffragists and women workers, to cultural leaders like Harry Belafonte who moved millions to support the Southern Freedom Movement (the US civil rights movement), this work has deep roots.

When we talk about donor and funder organizing, we’re referring to a broad range of people with ownership, control, or influence over capital. At Solidaire, over 45 percent of our network is made up of philanthropic professionals, including foundation staff and trustees. These members often bring the greatest cultural, racial, and class diversity to our network, and many have roots in grassroots organizing and have effectively infiltrated institutional philanthropy. And it’s worth mentioning that some of our individual donors are similarly embedded in frontline movements for justice—and can activate our network to amplify the impact of their own giving.

Donor and funder organizing has long played a quiet but crucial role in how movements grow and win.

As our members deepen their commitments, we see shifts in not only where resources go, but also how. Through practices like multiyear, general operating support; reducing burdensome reporting requirements; and experimenting with democratized decision-making, donors and funders can shift away from transactional, compliance-driven grantmaking. We’re uplifting a different kind of relationship—one where grantees are treated as partners, and donors and funders are committed to long-term collaboration. This includes funding movement security and safety, both urgent and long-term. It also means showing up as partners—leveraging early support to bring in additional resources.

Organizing Philanthropy: From Service to Strategy

Donor and funder organizing is essential to moving more money—and the right kind of money—to grassroots movements. If we’re serious about building the broadest possible base for collective liberation, then we have to organize people with access to wealth just like any other group.

Organizing donors and funders, like all organizing, requires political education, long-term relationship building, and the training and tools to act collectively. Every person has a role to play in building a more just and sustainable world. And we believe it must be done with integrity and humility, ensuring that people with wealth work alongside movement organizers in ways that do not replicate harm, bias, or power dynamics.

Donor networks like Solidaire exist to agitate, politicize, and transform people with access to wealth and power.

Movements already organize their own members. They shouldn’t also have to take on the work of organizing people with wealth. That responsibility belongs to donor networks like Solidaire and others who specialize in supporting people with access to wealth to step more fully into movement alignment—not just by giving more, but by giving differently, and organizing their peers to do the same. This is our lane.

We’re not here to serve philanthropy—we’re here to organize it. Donor networks like Solidaire exist to agitate, politicize, and transform people with access to wealth and power. Donor networks, when they reach their full potential, are not just spaces to introduce wealthy donors to new information or grantmaking strategies; they are spaces in which donors can develop their leadership—not just as grantmakers, but as organizers in their own right. By building these kinds of political homes, we can support donors to unlearn harmful assumptions, deepen their alignment with movements, and take collective action.

Bringing Donor Organizing to Life

In this series, we hope to illustrate these lessons through the stories of skilled donor organizers embedded in liberatory movements. Each offers a powerful example of what becomes possible when people with access to wealth commit to solidarity, relationship, and redistribution over the long haul.

Deborah Sagner shares how her giving and donor organizing are dedicated to Palestinian liberation. Sagner helped instigate and now provides ongoing operational funding for Funding Freedom, an initiative that builds support for Palestinian freedom in the philanthropic sector through education, advocacy, communications, and donor support. As the stock market surged after the 2024 election results, Sagner doubled her yearly giving by moving an additional $1 million—equal to the increase in her portfolio—to frontline groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights, In Our Name, and other groups defending the Constitution and Palestinian human rights. Her story demonstrates how donor organizing has confronted philanthropy’s failure to support Palestinian rights by challenging its silence and complicity, and by equipping both donors and institutions with the tools to take collective action.

Katrina Schaffer grounds her donor organizing in disability justice, shaped by her experience growing up alongside her sibling with cerebral palsy. An heir to a corporate family fortune, Schaffer has spent down her $25 million inheritance with a focus on infrastructure for frontline disability justice. Informed by conversations with movement leaders, she helped seed the Disability Frontlines Fund, the first national fund led by and for BIPOC disabled leaders. Even after spending down, Schaffer continues to support others to develop giving plans and organize their families toward greater redistribution.

Margi Dashevsky is dedicated to climate justice organizing in Alaska, working in coalition with Alaska Native-led groups resisting extraction and advancing a just transition from fossil fuels. She has redistributed her $3.5 million inheritance to Black- and Indigenous-led organizing efforts grounded in interdependence, land stewardship, and collective care. Her story illustrates how donor organizing can grow from deep place-based relationships and how the act of redistribution can be both politically powerful and personally healing. At the same time, she names the tension between giving away her own wealth while struggling to fundraise for movements she’s part of.

Finally, drawing on her forthcoming book Class Traitors, sociologist Rachel Sherman will offer a sharp analysis of how people with wealth are challenging the systems that produced their privilege—and choosing class betrayal as a political act. Her earlier book, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence, explored how affluent liberals wrestle with guilt, responsibility, and inequality, questions that continue to shape this work.

The Work Ahead

As the United States and the world at large face mounting crises—from authoritarianism to systemic economic injustice to climate collapse—advocates cannot afford to leave any reservoir of power unorganized.

Donor and funder organizing is not a silver bullet, but it is an essential piece of the puzzle. When rooted in movement accountability and the North Star of collective liberation, donor organizing can become a powerful force for redistributing resources, challenging power, and building the world we all deserve.

If there are people with wealth in your community, your base, or your organization’s list of supporters, this series aims to help you see what’s possible. Because it’s going to take all of us to get free.