Edge Funders Alliance

The Edge Funders Alliance encourages and educates philanthropists to drive systemic change through what it calls a “just transition,” a radical-left approach that includes making reparations for the historically exploited and oppressed, moving economic power to communities and employees from businesses, and building a global movement emphasizing local communities as “authentic democracies.” ⁶ The Edge Funders Alliance claims redistribution will place wealth, resources, and power into control of the oppressed. ⁷ It believes philanthropists earned their assets by taking advantage of others through environmental exploitation, enslavement, and colonialism. The alliance claims the sector supports white supremacy by insufficiently supporting transformative movements. ⁷

Leadership for the Edge Funders Alliance includes the co-chair of the board of directors, Rose Longhurst, and board member Laine Romero-Alston, who both work for the Open Society Foundations. ⁸

Background

Edge is an acronym for “Engaged Donors for Global Equity.” The Edge Funders Alliance bases its approach on the anti-globalization movement opposing “neoliberal” policies and systems. It expanded into Europe after the 2015 United Nations’ Climate Change Conference that spawned the Paris Climate Agreement. ⁹

The merger of two funding networks, Grantmakers without Borders, and the Funders Network on Transforming the Global Economy created Edge Funders Alliance. Grantmakers focused on philanthropies outside the United States, while the Funders Network concentrated on global economic issues. ¹ The Funders Network was a project of the Environmental Grantmakers Association that allowed offshore foundations to participate in anti-American industry efforts. Founding members included the French American Charitable Trust, JMG Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. ⁵ The Funders Network on Transforming the Global Economy focused their funding on opposition to fossil-fuel infrastructure and gaining support from minority communities to fight climate change. ¹⁰

Activism

Covid-19

The Edge Funders Alliance alleges that systemic “flaws and inequities” like capitalism, anthropocentrism, and patriarchy caused the pandemic. It considers the pandemic as an unprecedented opportunity to develop and transition to new regenerative societal systems away from extractive systems. ¹¹

The Edge Funders Alliance was among 348 signers of a petition under the leadership of the Stay Grounded group. The petition demanded that the U.S. Congress not fund a bail-out for the airline industry to return to business as normal after the pandemic. It demanded a transition to environmentalist mobility like train travel and a reduction in air travel to reduce conventional fuel use and conventional-energy based jobs. It seeks taxes to reduce air travel. ¹²

Demand Letter to Jeff Bezos

Leadership of Edge Funders Alliance, including co-executive director Sofia Arroyo Martin Del Campo, board co-chair Cuong Hoang, and fellow Samantha Harvey joined Funders for Just and Equitable Climate Solutions in a letter to Jeff Bezos. The letter insists Amazon reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restructure Bezos’s businesses entirely to help alleviate climate change. It demands he halt monopolistic practices “tearing the heart out of small towns and large cities,” to direct his funding to “front-line” community organizations creating the radical-left “just transition.” ¹³

How We Live: A Journey Towards a Just Transition

The Edge Funders Alliance published a video in 2014 called How We Live: A Journey Towards a Just Transition funded by left-of-center environmentalist groups including ClimateWorks, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sea Change Foundation, the Tides Center, Wallace Global Fund, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Rockefeller Family Fund, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Tides Foundation. ¹⁴ It claims the global economic system is harmful to people and the planet. The video recommends communities organize to affect systemic change that protects the environment and provides left-progressive social and economic policies. ¹⁵ It alleged that production and finance were extractive in nature for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the many. ¹⁶

Goals

Philanthropic Change

The Edge Funders Alliance strives to persuade the philanthropic sector to stop using funding alone to accomplish global societal change. It seeks alternatives to capitalism, supporting the radical environmentalist “Rights of Nature” approach, feminist thinking, Buen Vivir, de-growth, and radcial-left heterodox economics. Its viewpoint is that the wealthy philanthropists are part of the problematic system causing crises like climate change and COVID-19. It seeks a transformation towards a utopian goal away from the current system it alleges created the crises through racism, patriarchy, neo-liberal capitalism, and upon a past of oppression and injustice.  An Edge Funders Network webinar with Charles Long from the radical Movement for Black Lives recommended that the correction should include wealth redistribution, reparations, and collectivism. ¹⁷

Systemic Change

The Edge Funders Alliance specifically funds projects to affect systemic change to re-direct global economies towards an alleged sustainable direction. It describes systemic as including economic, social, and ecological considerations. It finances global movements and public protests by youth against what it labels extraction or exploitation of resources, both environmental and human. Its end goal is a transition to a new system with an economic model focusing on a “resilience solution.” The so-called solution is a system of decentralization, democracy, diversity, equal sharing (or commoning) of economic and natural resources. ¹⁸

Resource Kit

The Edge Funders Alliance created and hosts a resource kit featuring tools from many partners and authors that promulgate strategies on how to affect systemic change during and after the pandemic. It is a collection of opinions and avenues to transition into what it labels a regenerative system. ¹¹

Transition Network

The Edge Funders Alliance resource kit features an article published by the Transition Network called, “What the Transition movement can teach us about how to ‘bounce forward.’” The authors seek to move towards immediate compliance with the United Nations recommendation of 7.6% reduction in the global heating targets every year. It states the pandemic lock downs resulted in a reduction of 5.5% globally and that the lockdowns prove change is possible. The Transition Network calls for leaders to save the world with this second chance the pandemic offers rather than saving an economic system allegedly intent on earth’s destruction. It has stated that COVID-19 is the opportunity to “bounce forward” to a new system that will reduce the threat of climate change. The Transition Network cites the use of movements like the radical Extinction Rebellion as essential to bring enough pressure to affect change. ¹⁹

David Korten

David Korten’s article, “From Emergency to Emergence” is part of the Edge Funders Alliance resource kit and calls for a new economy to avoid a climate disaster. The new system must move power from profit-focused corporations to self-run communities. These communities will manage the sharing of resources and power. The new system will limit resource use to types like regenerative agriculture and recycling that positively affect people and nature while eliminating the significant resource use that contributes to war and financial speculation without benefit. Korten claims that the COVID pandemic opened the “Overton Window” sufficiently to allow for new systems like shopping locally instead of in large extractive corporations that steal from communities like Amazon and Walmart. The new system will also force technology use to shrink commuting and travel that reduces pollution, personal vehicle use, and air travel.

Korten sees the post-pandemic world as dependent upon wind and solar energy and recycling everything to eliminate waste. Everyone will have access to affordable high-speed internet. Local food production will focus on restoring soil health. There will be healthcare for all, and a “civil civilization” that focuses on the welfare of all people and the earth. The new society will create just salaries and job security for essential workers. Guaranteed food rights will exist for everyone, regardless of employment status. ²⁰

Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan

Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan’s article, “Permanently Organized Communities,” in the Edge Funders Alliance resource kit insists upon the radical-left just transition from a “banks and tanks” economy to sacred and caring economies with COVID-19 providing an opportunity. She calls for a codification of emergency pandemic policies to permanent status, including eviction moratoriums, debt freezes, sick leave mandates, foreclosure moratoriums, free medical testing, and government-run health care. Michelle recommends shifting more workers to the care industry with the ability to make management decisions. She insists that so-called people of privilege share their assets and give resources like money, second homes, and extra food back to those in need. The “just transition” purports to eliminate a hierarchal system favoring the privileged to one where alleged gender-oppressed, BIPOC, and poor/working class will have equal access to all resources. ²¹

Just Transition Framework

The Edge Funders Alliance resource kit features a Just Transition Framework infographic that illustrates the transition blueprint from what it labels an extractive economy to a living economy. The process starts with “stop the bad,” by shifting power from what it describes as consumerism and colonialism, using extraction and worker exploitation, enforced by the military complex. It intends to implement a “starve and stop” process of the current economic and political systems. The goals are to “shift economic control to communities, democratize wealth and the workplace, advance ecological restoration, drive racial justice and social equity, re-localize most production and consumption, retain and restore cultures and traditions.” ²²

Justice Funders

The Justice Funders’ article, “Philanthropy, this is our ‘Matrix’ moment . . . what will you choose?” is in the Edge Funders Alliance resource kit. It claims the root of all American wealth is exploitation and extraction. The alleged causes include the genocide of indigenous people and the theft of their land, disregard for women’s contributions, destruction of ecosystems and the “web of life”, and slavery. It compares the United States to a computer infected with the viruses of colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism that have damaged the climate, education, economy, safety, and the public health.

To correct these injustices, it insists the “collective well-being” must come first by instilling a redistribution towards new economic systems within the oppressed communities. Justice Funders supports wealth redistribution, so-called democratizing of power, and giving control to local communities. The article insists for an abandonment of the rules of conventional finance that place profits first. The new system will prioritize local efforts of community investment and enrichment. ²³

Partners and Members

Key members of the Edge Funders Alliance include the Overbrook Foundation, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. ¹

Fearless Cities Network

The Fearless Cities network is a movement of global municipalities working with the Edge Funders Alliance to find new ways to distribute and direct power, oppose national and international forces, and shape a new future. ²⁴

The Guerrilla Foundation

The Guerrilla Foundation is an alliance member²⁵ and fiscal supporter of the alliance, the radical Extinction Rebellion, and Fund Action. ²⁶ Antonis Schwarz, billionaire and founder of Guerilla is an advocate of the EDGE philosophy and considers it a “rabbit hole” from social elitism towards higher consciousness achieved through involvement with an organization like the Edge Funders Alliance. ²⁷

Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation

The Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation is a European alliance member that guides its program towards systemic change of modern society. It seeks to fight climate change by transforming the economic model that exceeds earth’s limits, expands inequality, and damages the ecosystem. ²⁸

Ariadne

Ariadne is a peer-to-peer network in Europe that supports social change and human rights. ²⁹ It signed a memorandum of understanding with Edge Funders Alliance to join efforts to create systemic change towards new societies alleged to be more democratic and equal. Ariadne’s membership includes over 550 philanthropies in 23 countries. ³⁰ The Open Society Foundation funds Ariadne. ³¹

Feminist Organizing School for Funders (FOS-F)

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and EDGE Funders Alliance aligned to base philanthropy in an anti-racist feminist effort by hosting the Feminist Organizing School for Funders. Its intent is to drive collaborative efforts to fund feminist causes to overcome patriarchy, transphobia, climate change, white supremacy, and homophobia. The hosts represent left-of-center and radical institutions like the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, the Grassroots Policy Project, the World March of Women, Freedom,  Grassroots International, and Foundation for a Just Society. The advisory committee includes representatives from groups like the Open Society Foundations, Chorus Foundation, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Foundation for a Just Society, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and Thousand Currents. ³²

FundAction

FundAction is an initiative of the Edge Funders Alliance managed by activists and members of social movements rather than traditional philanthropists that aren’t allowed to vote or make decisions. ⁹ It directs funding towards projects driving systemic change to address the so-called roots of injustice. Many of the projects include a “plan c,” which focuses on a commons movement, or sharing of institutions. ³³ FundAction was born from pooled funding between the Open Society, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, the Guerilla Foundation, and the European Cultural Foundation. ³

Leadership

Rose Longhurst is an Edge Funders Alliance board co-chair and the program officer at the Open Society Foundation. She was pivotal in the establishment of the activist group, FundAction. ³⁴

Jeff Furman of Ben and Jerry’s is active with the EDGE Funders Alliance,³⁵ and the Tides Foundation. ³⁶

Terry Odendahl serves on the board for the Edge Funders Alliance, the Save the Colorado, and the radical 350.org. She is the former co-chair of the EDGE Funders Alliance¹⁸ and former leader of the National Network of Grantmakers. Odendahl is a contributing author for The New York Times, the Guardian, Alliance Magazine, Eco-Watch, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. ³⁷ She is the executive director of the environmentalist group, the Global Greengrants Fund. ³⁸

Samantha Harvey is a fellow at the EDGE Funders Alliance and works on the Just Transition Project. ³⁹ Harvey describes minorities as the “sacrificial lambs of the climate crisis,” due to their disproportionate rate of Covid-19 infection. She blames a system built upon white supremacy as the connection between Covid-19 and climate change and believes this alleged fact will lead to an equitable post-pandemic world. Harvey considers the pandemic the “once-in-a-lifetime chance” to change the world to protect the environment and dismantle racism. ⁴⁰