Decolonizing Wealth Project

One of the organization’s largest campaigns is the Liberated Capital project, which distributes private donations to racial activism groups as “reparations” for historic racial injustices. Liberated Capital claims to have raised more than $5 million as of March 2022.  ^{4 5}

Decolonizing Wealth Project was a former project fiscally sponsored by Allied Media Projects, but as of 2026 it is fiscally sponsored by the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation. ⁶

Background

The Decolonizing Wealth Project was founded in 2019 and is based on principles articulated by founder Edgar Villanueva in his 2018 book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance. Villanueva attacked the $1 trillion philanthropic community as one that “mirrors oppressive colonial behavior” and reflects “racist colonial dynamics.” He published “Seven Steps to Healing” that call for funds to be directed to minority- and Native American-led organizations. ^{2 3}

Activities

The Decolonizing Wealth project was previously a fiscally-sponsored project of Allied Media Projects, but as of 2026 it is fiscally sponsored by the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation. ⁶ The group operates several campaigns including Liberated Capital, a grant distribution effort, and the Indigenous Earth Fund, which plans to give $1 million to Native American-led organizations to advocate for left-of-center environmental policies. ⁷

The group claims that between 2020 and 2025, it has distributed up to $30 million to “to Black, Indigenous-led organizations and other historically under-resourced groups.” ⁶

Liberated Capital

Liberated Capital is the largest campaign of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and consists of both advocating for far-left social policies such as reparations as well as distributing funds to left-leaning Native American activist and Black Lives Matter-connected organizations. A fundraising page for Liberated Capital states that the campaign has raised $5.4 million as of March 2022. ¹

As of March 2025, a list of grantees includes Action Center on Race & the Economy, Black Land and Liberation Initiative, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, Black Visions, Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, BYP100, California Native Vote Project, DC Justice Lab, Equal Justice Society, Giniw Collective, Honor the Earth, IllumiNative, Indigenous Environmental Network, Movement for Black Lives, N’COBRA, NDN Collective, New Georgia Project, Pueblo Action Alliance, Resources Legacy Fund, SisterSong, and the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. ⁶

Reparations

The Decolonizing Wealth Project supports financial reparations by the United States government to the descendants of slaves and displaced Native Americans. The organization has established a #Case4Reparations campaign as part of its larger Liberated Capital campaign that contends that the “United States was built on a history and practice of enslavement, genocide, and extraction of and from Indigenous peoples and African descendants—resulting in more than 400 years of policies and practices that have fueled economic extraction and systemic violence in Indigenous and Black communities.” ⁸

The advisory committee for the #Case4Reparations campaign includes Michelle Crentsil, the political director for the New York State Nurses Association; Kassandra Frederique, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance;  and Kwesi Chappin, former senior political director at Color of Change. ⁸

In June 2025, the group announced a “Moonshot Movement” to redirect up to $1 trillion over a ten-year period in grant and fundraising money towards “reparative philanthropy,” or how it describes as “the redistribution of resources in a manner that acknowledges the extractive origins of philanthropic wealth (family or institutional) and how colonization, slavery and the forms of oppression facilitated the accumulation of wealth that philanthropy protects, grows and distributes.” ^{6 9}

Funding

Between 2019 and 2024, the Decolonizing Wealth Project has received funding from several left-of-center groups through Allied Media Projects and later Amalgamated Charitable Foundation. These include the California Endowment ($5.88 million from 2022-2024), the MacArthur Foundation ($3.75 million in 2021), the Satterberg Foundation ($3.14 million from 2019-2024), the Chicago Community Trust ($3 million in 2021), the Ford Foundation ($2.7 million from 2019-2024), the Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation ($2 million in 2022), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($1.78 million from 2023-2024), the Skoll Foundation ($1.5 million from 2022-2024), the Omidyar Network Fund ($1.175 million from 2020-2024), the Weingart Foundation ($1 million from 2023-2024), and Magic Cabinet/Ken Birdwell Foundation ($1 million from 2023-2024). ⁶ Additional grants came from the California Wellness Foundation, the Christensen Fund, Working Families Power, the Bafrayung Fund, the NoVo Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, MacKenzie Scott‘s Yield Giving, and Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund. ⁶