Innovator Insights: Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Founder of Solidaire Network
Driven by the question, “What can a member of the elite one percent do to bring about more economic equality and social justice,” Leah Hunt-Hendrix co-founded Solidaire Network, a community of individuals with access to financial resources who are committed to funding progressive social movements and using privilege, knowledge, and networks to work toward a more just and equitable society. Leah’s efforts address structural racism in the world of philanthropy and support funding groups that fight for a more equitable distribution of wealth. Completing her Ph.D. in religion, ethics, and politics, Leah wrote her dissertation on the concept of solidarity, emphasizing relationships, a sense of purpose, and a sense of community. Leah recently led a series of conversations focused on redefining the future purpose of philanthropy.
II: What’s your North Star (or guiding vision)?
LHH: My north star is similar to the one that has guided many of us for centuries. A world where everyone has what they need to flourish. Where no one has far too much or far too little. Where we are not divided by arbitrary prejudice. A world that is made up of beautiful, strong, and loving communities.
II: What/who has the greatest impact on your work?
LHH: My two role models have been my mother, Helen LaKelly Hunt, and my PhD advisor, Cornel West. My mom helped create the women’s funding movement, establishing the Dallas Women’s Foundation and NY Women’s Foundation, and more recently, Women Moving Millions. We always had grantees on our family foundation board, learned from the leadership of people closest to the issues. And Cornel was a role model in his analysis and clarion call for justice.
II: How did you arrive personally/professionally where you are today? How does your experience inform your day to day work?
LHH: I was born and raised in philanthropy. It’s been something my family has been engaged with for many decades, and this gave me good exposure to models, challenges, and possibilities. I then did a PhD at Princeton in philosophy of religion and political theory. I personally needed that time to clarify my understanding of the good and the just and the kind of world we are aiming to build. During that time, I was able to attend the World Social Forum and gain a better sense of the kind of organizing and movement building taking place around the world. Finally, when Occupy took place, I happened to be living in NY and was ready and eager to understand, not just the theory of large-scale social change, but to see it in practice. Occupy was of course a messy and flawed event, but for many people of my generation, it was the first experience of collective action that we had experienced. That moment catalyzed me to think about how I could use the resources I have to support movements for economic, racial, and climate justice.
II: What was the process of founding Solidaire? How did you choose the pooled donor fund model as a way to break from more traditional forms of philanthropy?
LHH: We founded Solidaire in the wake of Occupy, to think about the relationship between “movement moments,” grassroots organizing, and structural change. Our goal was to create a network that might align serious dollars in the same direction, to support long term social movements. We didn’t intend to create a foundation or a large pooled fund, but it was important to us that everyone put some money on the table, to have a stake in the conversation.
The structure of Solidaire is an attempt to mirror the structure of social movements. We do rapid response for movement moments, getting tens of thousands of dollars out in 24–48 hours. Our pooled fund is for Movement R&D, for the experiments that rise up from movement moments as people build relationships and develop ideas for ways to take the work forward. And our Aligned Giving Strategy is where we make five-year commitments towards movement infrastructure. Our first attempt at this kind of alignment is in partnership with the Movement for Black Lives.
The Rapid Response challenges philanthropy by exploring the limits of nimbleness and responsiveness. The Pooled Fund, which is regranted by a committee of members and former grantees, demonstrates a way of giving up or sharing power and taking risks. And our Aligned Giving Strategy explores the limits of long term commitments to social movement infrastructure.
II: What drives your sense of urgency?
LHH: I frequently get texts from organizers I know who share about the crises their in communities. Families are getting torn apart and deported. Black men and women are getting shot by the police. Parents are burying their children. I feel grateful to be close enough to organizers who are working close to these events who can reach out and let us know what is needed.
II: How important is recognizing the role of structural inequity in this work? In your role, how do you ensure that social justice, equity, and inclusion become and remain fundamental elements of philanthropic efforts?
For us, these are just the values that are built into all of our work. When new people join Solidaire as members, they sign onto a contract that describes our values and operating principles. This includes a commitment to anti-racism and an understanding of intersectionality, and a commitment to solidarity as a practice of standing-with.
II: Philanthropy is defined by the notion of “doing good.” How can/has this come into conflict with doing what is just?
LHH: I love this question. I’ve always had a concern about the idea of “doing good,” which is often defined differently by different people. To do “good” is vague and depends on context and circumstance. “Doing good” is uni-directional, and focused on the ego of the actor. Justice is about structures of power and accountability. It is a condition in which all people are treated with dignity and are given what they deserve. I think the two concepts come into conflict frequently, when doing what is just, or pursuing justice, does not provide the personal satisfaction and gratification of the benefactor.
II: How can philanthropic institutions be better partners to social justice movements? How is philanthropy uniquely positioned to support racial justice movements- and what will it take for philanthropic institutions to recognize and act on this?
LHH: We’ve been working on a set of principles for “Movement Philanthropy.” These include: being humble, funding ecosystems (rather than single organizations), taking the risks (especially the risk of letting go), and making long-term commitments. Philanthropy has the power to support movements, but also to undermine them, by creating competition, by demanding organizers’ time, by imposing a set of politics that water down or chasten the movement. But alternatively, in a time of such devastating racial disparities in America, philanthropy has the power and potential to take a stand and begin shifting significant resources towards communities of color, that have otherwise been exploited. This would require an intentional commitment to use a racial justice lens in our funding, to direct resources to black-led organizations and organizations led by people that look like the communities they serve. It will require philanthropy recognizing and deciding to address its own racial biases.
II: How has Solidaire’s strategy evolved (e.g. strengths and drawbacks to community-based decision making)? What is the process of soliciting and integrating grantee/community feedback? What are the steps Solidaire is taking to elevate the voices of activists and innovators on the ground (who are often coming from communities of color)?
LHH: We have several mechanisms for collective giving. First, we do rapid response funding through our listserv, and any member can share a need and encourage others to take action. Second, we have a pooled fund, into which every member contributes $10k/year. Initially, we regranted this fund through a collective process with our members. However, based on member input, we have recently shifted and created a Giving Committee made up of 4 members and 5 former grantees. This streamlines the process, offers grantees an opportunity to sit on the same side of the table with us, and creates the possibility of forming stronger relationships between our members and organizers in the movement. This winter is our first experience with this new process, and we plan to do an in depth assessment with our grantee participants upon completion of this cycle. Finally, we have a third strategy which is called our Aligned Giving Strategy, through which we do not pool funds, but instead we move them in the same direction to build movement infrastructure over 5 years. We are currently in partnership with the Movement for Black Lives. Our AGS was created through in depth conversation with many organizers in the movement, and while it was not created through a collective decision-making process, we received significant feedback each step along the way. We will similarly be evaluating throughout the process to make sure it is responsive to the needs of the organizations in the movement.
II: Can you describe the process of working with those in privileged positions (racially, economically, gender-wise) to engage with those on the other side of economic structures?
LHH: Working with donors is similar to any other kind of organizing. Organizing starts with a one on one, the beginning of a relationship. It starts with listening to what someone cares about and where they are in their lives. Then it requires taking an action. For many of our members, participating in a small way in rapid response activity is a first action that brings one into the movement. Then it involves making more commitments, and ultimately stepping into leadership. The most important thing to remember is that Individuals with wealth are just people, and have their own wounds and desires. We all want to live lives of meaning, to have a role in changing the world for the better, and to be in community. So often, fundraising is treated transactionally, and both the donor and the grantee are objectified. We try to avoid this by developing real relationships, being together in community, and growing together over time. It’s crucially important that we do this as a community of donors, and as a movement community, that bridges between donors and organizers. We are still looking for ways to avoid bringing organizers into our spaces, and instead bring our members into movement spaces. Our Giving Committee brings organizers into our space, and we have frequent salons with movement leaders to hear about what they’re doing. But it is a growing edge for us to learn how to bring our members into movement spaces, not as donors, but as allies and participants.
II: You’ve put some provocative questions in front of philanthropic leaders: How does philanthropy understand the economic system that is its maker? Should philanthropy address the inequality of which it is a symptom? And if so, how? What brought you to this line of thinking and how would you answer these questions yourself?
LHH: To me, as stated, philanthropy is a symptom of a broken economic system, which allows massive amounts of wealth to be accumulated by the few. Occupy helped reveal the extent of today’s economic inequality, and the divide between the 1% and the 99%. This is in part due to decreasing rates of taxation, increasing monopolies (the decline of anti-trust litigation), a series of deregulations in the financial industry, among other measures. The rise of Big Philanthropy is a product of the neo-liberal agenda to strengthen corporate power. What to do? Personally, I’ve taken a journey in trying to discern an answer to this question. I believe that we need to significantly reform our financial industry, and create better ways of holding corporations accountable. But I also believe that we cannot jump to policy. Changing policy at that level will require significant power, and power comes from organization. For this reason, I believe that we need to invest in progressive social movements, so that they can build the power to fight for political change. Philanthropy should follow these movements, and work with them to develop an agenda, rather than leaping over them in an attempt to take a short-cut.
