The economic justice movement needs leaders willing to ask complicated questions and develop smart answers.

Quixote Foundation is currently developing a 2008 funding plan for the economic justice interest area and is not accepting Letters of Inquiry yet this year. Please check frequently for updates.

In 2006 and 2007 we convened two invitational retreats as a chance for progressive leaders to exchange ideas. The concept was simple but unusual: identify people who play well with others and stand out nationally for doing sharply innovative work. Bring them together regardless of the topical focus of their activism, their location or status in the institutional and movement pecking orders. Provide time for free-form conversations about innovation, organizing and other topics of their choice--with no obligation to reach conclusions, issue reports or produce any particular results.

Participants talked about everything from sizzling hot technology to puzzling sacred cows. They discussed the urgent need to stop typecasting activists by race. They brainstormed ways state organizations can pool money to buy information. And that's only a quick taste of the wide-ranging, intensive discussions that took place over several days....

Since these meetings, participants have followed up on their own to create a civic engagement pilot project, launch sister organizations in new states, expand funding coalitions, join each others' boards, exchange information-gathering tours and collaborate in an amazing variety of other ways.

We've yet to find "sponsoring kismet" in a guide to foundation best practices, but it's at the top of Quixote Foundation's list. People who otherwise would have been unlikely to meet had a chance to cross paths. They traversed state, institutional and topical borders to discover ways of working together. Collectively, they're strengthening our progressive infrastructure beyond any expectations we could have defined. The results are still unfolding.

Here are the goals we're pursuing in this interest area:

  • individuals and families have the food, shelter, health care, education, opportunity, political power and freedom they need to determine their own economic destinies

  • all people and organizations invest in society by paying a share of taxes commensurate with their financial standing and sufficient to provide a social safety net

  • no sector of society is affected disproportionately by pollution or other adverse environmental health conditions