The conventional philanthropic model rests largely on a bedrock of privilege and top-heavy power dynamics. As long as they stay within the forgiving bounds of tax law, mainstream American law and culture assumes that the rich have every right to the privileges and power they wield.
Founded in 2013, the Solidaire Network exists in large part to combat these assumptions. In effect, Solidaire is a philanthropy-serving organization whose ultimate goal is to upend conventional philanthropy. Additionally, the organization believes that the systems that have allowed the concentration of power and wealth “must be fundamentally reimagined” to fulfill the group’s vision for social and racial justice.
“It’s not just about moving money to front-line activists,” said Ingrid Benedict, the chair of Solidaire’s board of directors. “It’s about my own transformation around wealth, power and privilege.” Abigail Disney’s Daphne Foundation, for which Benedict serves as director, is an institutional Solidaire member.
Now approaching 10 years of advising donors and making grants, the network is also increasingly effective at moving money. In 2019, for example, Solidaire formulated a new strategic plan. Under the “Theory of Liberation,” the network set an ambitious goal: to inspire its donor members to move $1 billion to social change movements by 2029.
Just three years later, Solidaire’s members are on track to donate more than 80% of that goal, or $878 million, by the end of 2024, and to surpass the $1 billion goal far ahead of schedule. That money is in addition to the in-house funds that Solidaire awards, which totaled $13.7 million in 2021 alone.
Donor members can also participate in Rapid Response giving through a member-driven email listserv that allows participants to alert each other to urgent, time-sensitive needs in the field. While Solidaire doesn’t track Rapid Response giving overall, the organization shared some results that demonstrate impressive participation — in one instance alone, members collectively moved roughly $2 million in just three weeks.
In a philanthrosphere that all too frequently sticks to its own status quo, the Solidaire Network seems to be a dynamic, risk-friendly organization willing to take on several things at once: moving money quickly to support urgent needs; providing enduring support to build the capacity of front-line nonprofits fighting for social change, and challenging wealth holders to go well beyond awarding grants or writing checks. Its model also seems to be increasingly attractive. The network’s membership has more than doubled in the past three years, from 122 in 2019 to 311 so far in 2022.
From Occupy’s youth to a multigenerational network
Solidaire’s founders, including founding Executive Director Leah Hunt-Hendrix, were inspired in part by the movement that arose during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests. But while Occupy was part of the inspiration, said current Solidaire Executive Director Rajasvini Bhansali, the near-concurrent Arab Spring protests and the 2014 Black Lives Matter movement that sprung up after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, also moved Solidaire’s founders.
The network’s founding members were young. They shared an understanding that excess wealth isn’t the result of merit, but is derived from a system of exploitation and oppression. Occupy taught them that wealth owners had a disproportionate share of resources, and that they weren’t moving enough of those resources to the working poor and folks living in poverty. At the same time, their connections on the ground were reporting that foundations seemed to think racial justice work was too risky to fund, and wealthy individuals as a whole didn’t know where to direct their money to do the most good.
The founders felt like there wasn’t a way for them, or others who shared their political outlook, to move resources rapidly, “so one of the reasons our founders came together and created Solidaire was to respond quickly to asks from grassroots groups and organizers,” Bhansali said.
Beyond moving money quickly, Hunt-Hendrix, herself an heiress, was meeting other young people like herself, “wealth inheritors whose families were part of the 1%, who no longer wanted to be part of the 1%,” Bhansali said. “But they didn’t know who to organize with and how to move these resources and how to appropriately be in right relationship and solidarity with the 99%.”
Today, Bhansali said, Solidaire’s individual donor members are intergenerational, divided roughly evenly between the millennial, baby boom, and X generations. The network’s membership originally only admitted institutional members on a case-by-case basis; in 2019, it changed course and began doing concerted outreach to foundations. Bhansali said that last year, membership grew by roughly six or seven members a month; about 70% of them were individual wealth holders. The membership is also more racially diverse these days, Bhansali said, because most of the family foundation leaders who are now part of the network are people of color.
Sam Jacobs, a Solidaire board member and one of its younger members, represents the latest wave of shifting attitudes toward inherited wealth. Jacobs, who is under 30, has garnered mainstream media coverage for his efforts to get control of his inherited wealth so he can give it away more quickly. Jacobs, who was in high school when the Occupy protests began, said that Solidaire’s staff of sharp organizers allow people like him to make meaningful contributions to social movements “without giving us the keys to the car,” by letting donors set the agenda for the nonprofits they support.
Anecdotes aren’t data, but Jacobs said that in his experience, he isn’t alone. “We’ve seen an increasing number of people say, ‘Look, I’m receiving an inheritance. I have this unearned wealth. I want to redistribute it; I want it to go to social movements,’” he said.
Younger wealth holders aren’t the only ones rethinking their relationship with money and privilege. Whether they’re individuals or institutions, young or old, Bhansali said that Solidaire’s members share similar attitudes about their wealth and what they should do with it. Solidaire members “see themselves as a participant in a social project that is trying to fundamentally end economic injustice.”
Solidaire memberships start at $20,000, according to the organization’s website, and “increase based on giving capacity.” In addition to participating in the Rapid Response listserv, the network provides members with ongoing opportunities to participate in political education and to meet, learn from, and work with both movement leaders and each other.
Moving fast and building movements to last
While Solidaire’s ability to inspire its members to move large amounts of money quickly may seem key from the outside, Digital Strategist Barni Axmed Qaasim said that the network’s pooled grantmaking funds are “the heart and soul of our work.” Through its pooled funds, Solidaire provides multiyear, general operating support to help social movement nonprofits build lasting infrastructure. The trusting relationships Solidaire builds through its pooled funds also allow the network to mobilize its members’ money quickly when needed, Qaasim said.
Solidaire currently operates three separate pooled funds. The Movement Infrastructure Fund currently supports 55 grantees including Alaska Public Interest Research Group, Indigenous Environmental Network and One Fair Wage. The Black Liberation Pooled Fund moved $7 million through Solidaire directly and more than $20 million in partner giving between 2013 and 2019.
In 2021, Solidaire launched its Social Justice Funds Portfolio — a partnership with nine movement-aligned funds and a commitment to providing general operating support grants to those funds “so that they have the flexibility to move the money as they see fit.” Partner organizations include the Black Feminist and Groundswell funds and the Trans Justice Funding Project.
“The idea is that our pooled funds are where our members get to pool their resources together, and grants move out to communities,” said Solidaire’s Bhansali. “Our staff are very skillful organizers who deepen relationships with movement on behalf of the members and then, in return, translate the learnings in a way that stimulates more giving and leverages each other’s resources.”
Solidaire Network, a 501(c)(3) grantmaker, reported 2021 net assets of just over $10 million. The network also has a 501(c)(4), Solidaire Action, which is fiscally sponsored by Tides Advocacy. Since 2020, that fund has more than doubled in size, from $557,500 in 2021 to $1.2 million reported in June 2022.
Is Solidaire an outlier or a wave of the future?
Solidaire Network is a comparatively young, fast-growing organization with huge and ambitious goals. Given the documented negative impacts of economic inequality in the U.S., learning that there are more than a few rich people who agree that they have too much money and power, and who are actively working to redistribute both, is definitely cause for celebration.
It’s also important to note, however, that even with its impressive growth, Solidaire’s collective network of 300+ individuals and foundations represents barely a teardrop in the ocean of the more than 86,000 estimated U.S. foundations alone. Current efforts to limit donors’ ability to hoard wealth in donor-advised funds and to incentivize private foundations to increase their annual payouts are both tepid and stalled in Congress.
Solidaire board member Sam Jacobs admits that even though more people may be reconsidering their wealth and privilege, “I don’t believe we’re going to get to the place we need to go if it’s a voluntary choice for everyone. That’s why movements for tax justice are so important, and movements like the reparations movement really matter.”
But even facing these challenges, it would be premature to dismiss Solidaire, and particularly today’s crop of young heirs who would rather give away their wealth than hoard it.