Our Approach
Why we’re funding
For 75 years, our mission has been to advance the interconnected issues of peace, justice, and a healthy environment. We support cross-movement work that builds political and cultural power for a broader progressive agenda.
For the past decade, we’ve crystallized our mission into four core areas: progressive foreign policy, climate solutions, reproductive justice, and a strong and equitable democracy. Gender and racial justice are at the heart of each of these.
What we’re funding
Since 2011, we’ve prioritized two connected strategies:
- Transformative leadership: Working collaboratively across difference, building positive visions for long-term social change, and figuring out the strategies across institutional and sector boundaries required to get there. We know leading in this moment in history requires challenging the structural status quo and putting in the time to build authentic relationships. At its core, transformative leadership is movement building.
- Courageous storytelling: The stories we tell shape how we connect to each other and the world around us. Changing stories has the potential to alter culture, politics, policy, and behavior. To that end, we fund the work of artists working to make vivid and irresistible the better world to which we aspire, as well as organizers working to harness the power of culture and narrative to spark social change.
In our final years of grantmaking, we are supporting existing grantees who integrate these approaches. We are not accepting new unsolicited proposals.
How we’re funding
As we spend out our assets, we are continually learning about how to make grants in ways that build trust, shift power, and strengthen the movements we support.
- We fund over the long-term. Social change takes time, so the large majority of our grants budget is committed in multi-year, unrestricted grants.
- We fund networks and relationships. We invest in an “ecosystem” of work, honoring the magic that can come from unlikely coalitions and collaborations.
- We lessen administrative burdens on our grantee partners. We’ve revised our proposal and reporting processes to center trust, relationship, and learning.
- We practice “all-in philanthropy.” We strive to use all our assets—from our investment portfolio to our staff’s time—to advance the work. Read more about this and our simplified operations in Moving Money into Movements.