EDGE Funders 15th annual Just Giving Conference

Plan to be in Baltimore with us for the 15th annual Just Giving Conference!

EDGE Funders is a place within philanthropy for an explicit journey of exploration of the deeper philosophical ideas that animate contemporary politics, economics and culture.

As we assess the current state of our world and consider together the elements that are essential to a ‘just transition’, and ultimately, a just economy, we are called to consider four goals: to decommodify nature, reimagine work, liberate knowledge and democratize wealth.

This year’s Just Giving conference will ask:

How are nature, work, knowledge and wealth being appropriated for private ends?
How can such enclosures be resisted, and transcended?
How are local, translocal and transnational movements engaging in this work?
How can philanthropy support their efforts?

Daily plenaries will frame our discussions and activities:

Seeing Beyond More: Towards a Collaborative Commons for the Public Good

On principles and elements essential to an ecological and socially just economy, examining the loss of common rights under “enclosure” to the detriment of the public good. ~ Moderated by Harriet Barlow, Blue Mountain Center.

Getting to Better: Turning Principles and Vision into Practice

On diverse models and approaches contributing to an emerging alternative economy rooted in notions of cooperative management and collective ownership, in feminist as well as ecological economics, and in the creative and the natural commons. ~ Moderated by Nikhil Aziz, American Jewish World Service.

Philanthropy’s Challenge: Providing Support Towards Transformational Ends

On noteworthy and significant ways philanthropy can support this work, through an engaged philanthropy commensurate with the times in which we live. ~ Moderated by Stuart Clarke, Towne Creek Foundation.

Plenaries, breakout workshops and other activities on the first two days of the conference will build momentum towards an exciting third day focusing on the role of philanthropy. Your full engagement is therefore extremely important and we ask that participants stay until the close of the conference at 4 pm on Friday, April 10.

Annie Leonard, Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

Annie is a veteran environmental campaigner and creator of the influential 2007 video series, The Story of Stuff. An expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than 20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world, Annie is a tireless fighter for the environment and longtime leader in the movement to push for solutions that change the economy’s goal from “more” to “better.”

Naomi Klien, Journalist & Author (via satellite.)

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and author of “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” (2014). Her other books include “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (2007), which was a New York Times Critics’ Pick of the Year, and “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (1999), which was named by TIME magazine as one of the top 100 non-fiction books published since 1923. Klein is a contributing editor for Harper’s, a reporter for Rolling Stone and a columnist for The Nation and The Guardian. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek. She won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2014 and the International Studies Association’s IPE Outstanding Activist-Scholar award in 2014.