Field Note: Where Will the Money Come from?

• The news that Wellspring Philanthropy Fund is closing its doors by 2028 came as a shock to many in the human rights space, especially coming on the heels of OSF's recent pivot away from civil society and rights work.
• These two funders have been pillars of human rights funding, but they have also, sometimes quietly, been big backers of participatory funders, from FRIDA to the Red Umbrella Fund.  
• I've spoken with a few folks about this and heard some hunches – perhaps bitcoin millionaires, or  the MacKenzie Scotts and Melinda French Gates' of the world. There's a general consensus that we'll need to look beyond the traditional major foundations, and even get creative when it comes to how we think about resourcing movements.
• I chatted about this with Angelika Arutyunova, an International Feminist Consultant and a co-founder of FRIDA and Dalan Fund. She shared: "I've been one of the people asking and researching the question 'Where is the money?' for close to two decades now. We now know that the money isn't here, and what is left is rapidly leaving. So I've started asking: 'Where will the money come from?' How will we resource social justice causes and organizing in the future? It's going to look different from what we know and do now. To get to that ‘different’, we'll need to step out of current ways of thinking. That includes (1) asking what it will look like to resource movements beyond just grants; and (2) shifting the focus away from North-based philanthropy as THE source of resource mobilization."

- BW