Our Past, Present, and Future
Our Past
The Solidago Foundation was founded in 1996 with the intention of completely distributing its assets within approximately twenty-five years. The types of efforts we have supported over the years include workers’ rights, economic justice, climate justice, and electoral justice. We have funded primarily in the Northeast and Southwest United States, and have also supported grassroots movements in other countries, including East Timor and Mexico.
In 2006, Solidago established the See Forward Fund as a 501(c)4 affiliate; it is now an independent organization. The See Forward Fund helps develop, build the capacity of, and carry out the work of 501(c)4 organizations, with a focus on the same program areas as the Solidago Foundation.
Our Present
The current strategic focus of the Solidago Foundation is to protect, strengthen, and deepen our democracy. We do this by supporting groups working to:
- Foster greater non-partisan civic engagement among people negatively impacted by structural inequities; and
- Ensure that elected officials are held accountable to communities that have traditionally been excluded from systems of power and privilege, and actively engage those communities in co-creating solutions to systemic injustices.
We are doing this democracy-building work in selected geographic areas. In 2020, we worked with groups in several key states, including Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, and North Carolina. We are currently in the process of determining what states we will work in during the final phase of our grant-making, in 2021 and 2022.
Our Future
The Solidago Foundation is in the final stages of spending down our assets. In our remaining years, we hope to have the most strategic and deepest possible impact on grassroots movements for justice, specifically those engaged in grassroots-led democracy-building. As our grantmaking winds down, we intend to begin documenting our history and legacy, and offering our reflections the learnings of our approximately twenty-five years of progressive philanthropy.