Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. The goal on this show is to talk about bridging the gap between what we believe in and what we actually do with our money on a daily basis.
Money can be so fraught for so many of us. Either we don’t have enough of it, we’re living on the edge, survival is not guaranteed. Money is the root of our struggles.
Or money can be fraught because we know that our needs are met, we have adequate housing, we have food, clean water, access to health care, education. But money can still be fraught even in this scenario because of our guilty knowledge of the source of our money. We don’t feel good about how we’ve made our money. The organizations we work for are extractive, hoarding wealth, avoiding paying their fair share of taxes. Or our retirement accounts are funding companies who are committing those harms.
Inherited money can be fraught. What do you do if you’ve come into some money and you want to use it in alignment with your values?
Today let’s talk about groups that are addressing these questions and what we might learn from them. They are serving high net worth individuals, family offices, family foundations.
Toniic
They have about 500 members and their focus is on impact investing. In their own words, they envision a world where all investments honor the planet and its inhabitants. Toniic brings members together for in person peer gatherings, they also have an online community for their members and some resources that they make public.
I spent some time using the Toniic directory where you can pick from some drop down menus and find some investments that fit your criteria. So for example, I picked public equities- so just plain and simple stocks, ETFs, mutual funds that sort of thing. And then I picked clean water as my focus. And three investments popped up. The Allianz Global Fund, Invesco S&P Global Water Index ETF, and Wellington Global Impact Fund. From there you can do your own research to make sure it meets your needs. Or shoot it over to your financial advisor if you have one.
Maybe this is a good time for me to pause and do my usual disclaimer. I am not your financial advisor, I am not anybody’s financial advisor. I make decisions for my household only. I want to encourage you to find a legally certified financial advisor to help you make decisions on your own investments.
Toniic has a tool for members called the Toniic Tracer which allows you to look at your whole investment portfolio and set targets, like maybe you want half of your portfolio to go towards investments that align with your values on climate change and you want a third of your portfolio to go towards gender equity investments and the rest to go towards zero hunger investments. Or maybe you want to see what percentage of your portfolio is avoiding harm versus actually contributing towards solutions. It’s sort of a new way to look at your portfolio instead of only looking at the usual things like US based versus international investments or large cap versus small cap investments. You can also see how other investors’ portfolios are broken down according to their goals. The transition from fossil fuels to clean energy is the most common goal for investors who have shared their data with Toniic. That’s a tool for members. But they also have free resources even if you don’t join.
I’m going to include a link to the Toniic Directory so you can start your own research. There are 1,500 investments in total, but you will see, as you narrow it down, you will get a manageable list. When you narrow it down to public equities for example, you are already down to a smaller set of like 500 investments. And then you can pick your values, what is keeping you up at night. I picked another one, Fair Trade and Ethical Supply and the directory suggested 1 investment to me. So not overwhelming at all.
So the free resource on their site that I’m bookmarking to share here is the Toniic Directory of Impact Investments. It will be in the show notes.
WDN
The Women Donors Network is another organization that is supporting people with means who want to do things differently. They are focused on advancing gender, racial, economic, and climate justice. They have a sibling organization called WDN Action that is where they do their political advocacy. But for the Women Donors Network, they are harnessing the power of their members wallets through collective giving. So rather than Toniic which was about impact investing, WDN is about giving money away. Funding the activists and nonprofits that are doing the hard work. They fund emergencies through rapid response work but they also fund long term work creating structural change. Last year, WDN channeled $12 million to movements advancing gender, racial, economic, and climate justice in the U.S. and around the globe. They have a lot of programming for members, regional meetings and retreats, an annual conference, webinars, speaker salons. What is really resonating with me about their ethos is that they are trying to center work that’s being done by people who have historically been marginalized in society – including women, people of color, immigrants, low-income communities, and people across sexual orientations and gender identities. They prioritize grants to organizations that are BIPOC and women-led. They are trying to fund the work and get out of the way. Reducing the bureaucracy, tedious applications and reporting requirements.
They don’t have any free resources for non-members that I could see, but if you have a lot of money to donate and want a great starting place to think about the guidelines you may want to consider so you’re doing more help than harm. The actor Zendaya just partnered with them to donate $100K to a theater in her hometown although you don’t need to be a multi millionaire to be a member of Women Donors Network, they have different contribution levels, the highest is $25K+ but the lowest is $3K for one year.
Solidaire
They are focused on the intersectional movements of racial, gender, and climate justice. They, like WDN are focused on giving money away. In their words, “Solidaire Network moves money quickly and generously, and courageously advocates to repair the harms of society’s and philanthropy’s disinvestment from Black, Indigenous, immigrant and other communities leading from the margins.” So already you get the sense that they are more radical in their mindsets. They are based in Oakland. They want to make sure grassroots movements have what they need money and additional support. Again, I love that they’re not centering themselves as having the answers. They’re centering the people who are on the ground, actually doing the work in our communities.
Membership starts at $20K and programming includes annual retreats, regional hub gatherings, online learning calls, political education, working groups, and if you want, you can join a Solidarity Circle where you can go deeper with a smaller group of members.
If you’re looking for places to give that are more grassroots, then check out Solidaire’s websites. You can click on each of the funds they have. They have the Black Liberation Fund, and the Building the Fire Fund which is the first fund dedicated to Indigenous reproductive justice, and they have 3 more funds you can check out too. Those are some awesome lists to check out if you’re looking for grassroots efforts that you can help to fund, even if you’re not ready or interested in joining Solidaire quite yet.
There’s another group, maybe this one you have heard of before, it is called Resource Generation. I did a whole episode about them on Episode 97 When Trust Fund Kids Grow Up. That was a popular episode. If you missed it, I’d add that to your queue.
Very quickly, I do want to share just one more group, it is called:
Thousand Currents (unofficially I had heard that this was a group for people who aged out of Resource Generation group. Thousand Currents is focused on food sovereignty, economic and climate justice. You do need to have some experience with RG, maybe you’ve gone to one of their national retreats for example. But to be a member of the Thousand Currents giving circles, for example, you are asked to put $10K into the pot and then for 6 months you work with your giving circle to give the money away to address the climate crisis specifically, with support from Thousand Currents on how to reflect on the climate crisis from a Global South grassroots & movement perspective and how to learn from Indigenous knowledge of holistic climate justice solutions. They also have the Thousand Currents Academy which sounds really great- this is an annual academy where they bring in faculty from the Global South to share their grassroots wisdom so you can know how to better help. The curriculum is rooted in Global South, Indigenous and radical Black feminist traditions and knowledge. If you’ve never heard the term Global South before, it is not a geographic term! Basically, it is supposed to mean developing countries. Anyway, the annual academy sounds incredible, and I believe it is around $5K for a three day long training out in Atlanta including lodging, food, everything. It sounds like a great way to start with a strong foundation before you start the journey of giving if you have a lot to give.
So to recap, these are just a few of the groups that exist to support progressive giving if you have a lot to give:
- We started with Toniic out in San Francisco which is about impact investing. You can start by using their free resource to find investments that make sense according to your values. Links in the show notes.
- We then talked about the Women Development Network. They are really about giving the money away and then getting out of the way. Reducing the bureaucracy of it all.
- Solidaire is the third group we talked about. Based in Oakland, giving more of a radical flavor, in the best way possible. Some great lists of places to donate if you check out their funds in the show notes.
- And then at the end, I quickly mentioned Thousand Currents in the Bay area as well. They are also giving millions away, but what really stood out to me was that they are providing education from a Global South lens to empower givers to be more helpful.
If you’re ready to join one of these organizations you’ll be able to find the links in the show notes, or maybe you want to learn from their publicly available resources for now, I’ll link my favorites in the show notes as well.
I’m doing a careful read of Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva this year and one of the big concepts he talks about is how money has hurt our society but money can also heal so much of what is unbalanced and sick in our world. If you have the means, I hope you’ll find a way to build community so that you’re giving is more informed and goes farther. Good luck to you.
Let’s end with a quote:
“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else's oppression, we'll find our opportunities to make real change.” This quote comes to us from Ijeoma Oluo who wrote “So You Want To Talk About Race.”
If you enjoyed this episode, sign up for the newsletter. It comes out about once a month, in it, you’ll find useful links, I might share where I’m donating, what I’m reading, and other information to help us all get a little more alignment between our values and our money. You can sign up for it at progressive pockets dot com. Let’s talk again soon!
Toniic’s Directory of Impact Investments
https://toniic.com/diirectory/
Financial Times: Toniic, partner of GIIN, wants to bring impact investing to China’s wealthy
https://www.ft.com/content/23f02dd0-f3c9-11e8-9623-d7f9881e729f
Women Donors Network
https://womendonors.org/
San Francisco Chronicle: Zendaya makes $100,000 donation to Bay Area theater where she got her start
https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/zendaya-california-shakespeare-theater-donation-18680592.php
Solidaire
https://solidairenetwork.org/
https://solidairenetwork.org/movement-partnerships/black-liberation-pooled-fund/
Thousand Currents
https://thousandcurrents.org/
Resource Generation
https://resourcegeneration.org/