Just Transition & Systemic Change Programmatic Initiatives

EDGE organizes within progressive funders to create spaces for peer-to-peer sharing and changing philanthropy for systemic change and a just transition. This is a fundamental part of our work which happens in partnership with movement representatives. Inspired by the work of grassroots organizers all over the world, our community commits to uplift and support systemic alternatives dedicated to intersectional justice.

What are Programmatic Initiatives?

Initiatives are thematic lenses that we work with to understand, analyze and put into action our intersectional approach to systemic change philanthropy.

If we think of intersectionality as a prism, each lens is a facet of that prism that we “look” through to imagine systemic change and work towards a just transition. The prisms are naturally varied based on  the context, power, positionally, identities, histories and realities of each participant of the initiative, especially given their positioning as funders or movement representatives.

Objectives

To offer a space for funders & movements to engage in the form of both virtual and in-person meetings with the purpose of enabling actionable collaboration towards resourcing and organizing the emergence of the new systems we want to see.

  • LEARNING – To build joint knowledge and understanding
  • COMMUNITY – To create a blended funder/movement peer network around thematic topics and systemic change narratives
  • ACTION – To join forces and identifying opportunities for collective action, including better resourcing

How do they work?

Each of the three initiatives houses a variety of spaces, meetings and processes where funders and other stakeholders can engage. Some spaces are open to only EDGE members, some are open to EDGE members and movement partners, and some are open to the public.

The initiative participants meet every 4-6 weeks to coordinate and co-create. Meetings and conversations can vary in focus:

  • Co-chairship: Each initiative is co-chaired by an EDGE member (funder) and a compensated movement representative to co-create agendas with support from the EDGE team as well as act as sounding boards to ensure content resonates with priorities in their work as representatives.
  • Co-creation spaces: where participants present an idea to the group,
  • Working groups: where participants organize around an output (a report, a meetings, a session in a conference),
  • Coordination & community building: where participants get to know each other and coordinate amongst themselves. To disrupt power dynamics, EDGE staff is mindful of the realities of community building between funders & movements and can coordinate movement-only community building spaces as needed.

Who Can Join?

  • Movement representatives

    • Any activist, NGO, CSO, collective, or grassroots movement representatives working on systemic alternatives as part of a local or global movement who are open to collaborate, push against competitiveness and who have the interest and capacity to share their ideas on the philanthropic sector and to influence funders.
    • Movement representatives can automatically join any of the initiatives by signing up below.
    • If you have questions or suggestions, reach out to Hana who is the Movement Representatives point-person at EDGE!

  • Funders

    • Any grantmakers and liberators of resources who are part of a foundation, an activist-led fund, a family foundation or any other infrastructure that allows them to make decisions on how to move money.
    • EDGE members can join the initiatives automatically.
    • Funders who are non-members and individual consultants can sign up below. Shortly after, they will be contacted by EDGE staff to discuss ways of participating. Non-members need to contribute to the sustainability of the initiatives in some capacity since we rely on membership fees to sustain this work.

  • Fellow Networks

    • Fellow networks of funders and philanthropic infrastructure support organizations are important allies.
    • Upon signing up below, the Programs Manager will reach out to schedule a call to exchange plans of collaborations and organizing across our work.

Current Initiatives

In discussions with our members, the EDGE network has identified and used three lenses  over the past few years to build systemic change narratives: Gender Justice, Climate Justice and Economic Justice. Through the initiatives, funders who are EDGE members, funders who contribute to EDGE beyond membership (grants for example) and movement partners who have capacity to influence funders convene, learn, plan and take action related to these thematics  through the  initiatives.

Systemic Change Meet-ups

Even though initiatives are separated thematically to facilitate organizing, EDGE recognizes that systemic change narratives need to be intersectional and non-siloed.

The concept of intersectionality has been a useful guiding framework for explaining how systemic issues such as the climate emergency, racism and anti-Blackness, homophobia and transphobia, and economic injustice — to name a few — do not operate in isolation. Different marginalized groups often face barriers that fundamentally reshape their experiences of these issues, and of gaining “justice”. This, at the core, is what intersectionality is: a framework for understanding how power re-constitutes outcomes for different groups. To support our initiatives, and to set the agenda for organizing in philanthropy, we wish to discuss the ways we can address systemic change work using the framework of intersectionality, and also some of the barriers faced by the sometimes additive, not multiplicative approach that funders take.

To facilitate this, we will hold bi-annual virtual systemic change meet-ups, to share learnings and insights from all the initiatives.