Discussions about “infrastructure” in both philanthropy and movement spaces often revolve around legal counsel, strategic planning, cybersecurity, and fundraising. These supports are necessary, particularly for small or young nonprofits, but they’re far from sufficient to meet the challenges and fractures movements face today.
There are two problems here. First, infrastructure as a whole receives scant philanthropic support. Between 2004 and 2015, US foundations allocated $1.94 billion ($162 million per year) to infrastructure, less than 1 percent of all foundation giving, according to the Foundation Center.
By 2015, infrastructure giving had dropped to 0.59 percent of total giving, down from 0.86 percent in 2004. The numbers become even more dismal for Black and Indigenous-led organizations. Indigenous-led organizations receive less than 0.4 percent of all philanthropic dollars; Black-led organizations receive 1.9 percent. Both numbers are far below the share of Black and Indigenous people in the nation’s population.
But a second, even greater problem, is how infrastructure is (mis)defined. Philanthropy has built affinity groups, data hubs, and funder groups, but the vital and missing layer of narrative and solidarity infrastructure is often left out of the conversation.
Funding the Infrastructure Movements Need
Infrastructure, you see, is not just about capacity building for individual organizations. This is how foundations often talk about infrastructure. But that is a mistake.
No matter how brilliant their theories of change, individual organizations rarely change anything structurally on their own. It is movements that do that.
When we write about movement infrastructure, what we mean is the connective tissue that links organizations into movements, strengthens bonds among leaders, and fuels the cultural power required for transformation.
Without movement infrastructure in place, fragmentation remains the rule; narratives of scarcity and division continue to dominate; and movements for justice, equity, and liberation continue to find themselves on the defensive.
The problem is compounded by the fact that philanthropic funding structures tend to pit organizations against each other, forcing nonprofit organizations to compete over the same narrow streams of support.
The result is that nonprofits that can “prove” that their theory of change is “better” or “different” are rewarded. But of course, no matter how brilliant their theories of change, individual organizations rarely change anything structurally on their own. It is movements that do that.
In short, the current funding system fosters fragmentation, scarcity, and a lack of solidarity.
The conservative movement understood long ago that power follows through culture and narrative as much as it does through policy and litigation. Over decades, it has invested in an ecosystem of think tanks, media outlets, youth pipelines, cultural production, and digital echo chambers. The Heritage Foundation, Fox News, PragerU, and Turning Point USA are not isolated institutions; they are nodes in a dense web designed to influence worldviews and ideologies.
What is the comparable progressive movement infrastructure? Right now, despite valiant efforts by so many individually creative and brilliant nonprofits, it’s limited. And the consequences of this gap are apparent—rampant disinformation, divisive rhetoric amplified across digital platforms, a failure to do the organizing work needed to sustain solidarity among communities of color, and widespread exhaustion.
Without durable investments in this kind of movement infrastructure, social movements are left vulnerable and are forced to react to harmful narratives, instead of investing in the creative capacity to truly advance liberation.
Toward a New Ethic of Resourcing Collective Power
What can nonprofits and movements do differently? To advance transformative outcomes, both time and money must be invested in processes that make these outcomes possible.
Again, this means more than money. It requires having a more sophisticated notion of what movement infrastructure is and how to sustain it. In particular, this requires a sustained investment in the rituals, healing, and alignment work that form the emotional and cultural backbone of collective action.
More than a half-century ago, cultural theorist Raymond Williams called this work the “structure of feeling”—the emotional undercurrents that precede and propel political shifts.
This type of infrastructure cannot be captured neatly by traditional philanthropic metrics. We define this missing layer as comprising two key elements:
- Narrative Infrastructure: This refers to story-building and story-distribution capacity that enables actors across movements, communities, and cultural spaces to coalesce, build power, and popularize their liberatory ideas.
- Solidarity Infrastructure: This refers to the building of bonds of connection and belonging that enable actors to link across organizations, cultures, and ecosystems to invest in kinship-making, movement building, and collaboration.
A shared story without shared commitment collapses under pressure, and coordination without a cohesive vision struggles to inspire or endure.
When built intentionally, narrative infrastructure can support movements not only in responding to the news cycle but also in shaping it, seeding durable shifts in public norms, discourse, values, and imagination.
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And if narrative infrastructure creates the capacity for movements to coalesce, build power, and popularize the liberatory ideas, then solidarity infrastructure creates the capacity for movement actors across networks and ecosystems to invest in relationship building (often relegated as an afterthought) to then collaborate on a deeper level.
These two are interdependent—a shared story without shared commitment collapses under pressure, and coordination without a cohesive vision struggles to inspire or endure.
This infrastructure should not only create the space for movement and cultural workers to share and align strategies but also needs to support distribution of their stories at scale and across the different cultural spaces where people consume information.
To more deeply invest and understand this type of infrastructure, its impact, and how philanthropy can support scaling it, here are a number of principles to keep in mind:
- Expand the frame of infrastructure.
This means investing time and money in cultural, solidarity, relational, and narrative infrastructure that can support the sustainability and growth of movements.
- Support relationships at the micro level and solidarity at the macro level.
Creating space to build trust and connection among organizers enables the solidarity-building that can bring different organizations together. These bonds create ripple effects, spreading narratives of care, interdependence, solidarity, and altruism across society and slowly shift norms toward collectivism.
- Fund for the long haul.
And by long haul, we mean long haul. Often, three-year grants are considered extraordinarily long-term, but many conservative groups have gotten grants with committed support of up to 20 years.
- Prioritize contribution over attribution.
Both funding systems and movement practice should shift to collaborative models where the value lies in strengthening the whole ecosystem, rather than individual recognition.
- Put culture at the center.
Support artists, storytellers, and cultural production as a primary vehicle for shaping public imagination and policy debates.
- Practice democratic resourcing.
Empower movement actors to collectively decide how funds flow within their ecosystems. Movement leaders are the experts.
- Recognize that healing is part of the work.
Trauma and harm from colonialism and capitalism are systemic barriers to collective action, particularly among Black, Indigenous, and working-class communities. Fund practices that seek to restore, repair, and sustain organizers.
We are living through an era where movement truths and stories are under siege….Solidarity and shared narrative power can provide the antidote.
- Make participation possible.
Recognize that organizations, particularly Indigenous and Black-led organizations, have been historically disenfranchised from engaging in coalition work, and presently don’t have the same capacity to engage in coalition work as other organizations. This requires philanthropy to remove barriers to engagement by resourcing Black and Indigenous-led organizations at a higher level.
- Open-source learning.
Practice learning out loud—offering lessons, mistakes, and breakthroughs as public goods. When movements and philanthropic organizations cross-pollinate knowledge, it reduces duplication and increases efficiency.
- Measure new things.
Expand evaluation metrics to include solidarity, relational healing, and cultural impact, not just policy wins or outputs.
Cultivating Narrative Power in a Time of Repression
We are living through an era where movement truths and stories are under siege. Divide-and-rule, of course, is a form of elite control as old as the Roman Empire, but today division is clearly a key tactic that is holding movements back.
Solidarity and shared narrative power can provide the antidote. Cultivating this kind of power will require investing in the type of infrastructure outlined above. Narrative infrastructure ensures that ideas travel further and last longer; solidarity infrastructure ensures that organizations’ commitments can be sustained under pressure.
If philanthropy, nonprofits, and movements fail to adjust now, the forces of repression will gain strength, and the possibility of a just future will be diminished.
However, if narrative and solidarity infrastructure is built at scale, today’s movements will not only survive this moment of repression but will emerge stronger and can advance a powerful movement for justice, sovereignty, and liberation.
