What is social justice philanthropy? Earlier this year, Resource Generation, a network of young high-net-worth donors, held a series of webinars addressing this question. The network defines social justice philanthropy as giving that “focuses on the root causes of social, racial, economic and environmental injustices.” The point, in essence, is to use the resources that often have accumulated precisely because of those injustices to upend the systems that allowed the accumulation of wealth to occur in the first place.

But how can this be done effectively? Given that philanthropic capital is rooted in inequitable resource extraction, the inherent conflicts are obvious. Moving toward this justice objective despite those tensions and contradictions was a central theme in a multipart webinar series the group organized this past May and June.

In the conservations, speakers highlighted innovations in social justice philanthropy. At the same time, they readily acknowledged limits and contradictions. A common thread was a call to advance economic systems change by leveraging philanthropic resources to seed a more democratically controlled solidarity economy.

The first session focused on individual giving and included three people who have been active in the Resource Generation network; two of them had recently “aged out” of the network while one was still a member. Much of the information was highly personal—and for that reason, people’s names are omitted in this section. Some key strategies emerged to address the tensions inherent in individual giving for social justice:

  • Find your community and work as a team
  • Align giving with your “money story”
  • Cede control and communicate

Read the full article about social justice philanthropy by Steve Dubb at Nonprofit Quarterly.