Navigating Proximity to Wealth in Justice Work
I become so fluent in the language of philanthropy that I forget it's borrowed language from power structures.
When Jessyca Dudley, Founder and CEO of Bold Ventures, spoke with me about the challenges of being close to so much wealth while working in philanthropy, I began reflecting on my own role in this work. Acknowledging the source of foundation money is a topic I hadn’t discussed with anyone in the field. We talk about the impacts made, the campaigns won, the communities served, and the lives forever changed, but not why philanthropy exists in the first place. Jessyca is the first person I’ve met who clearly explains that philanthropy exists because of the extraction of labor and the concentration of wealth. It made me consider my own proximity to concentrated wealth and the privilege it provides.
It’s a double-edged sword. My ability to do this work, to have a career fighting for justice, stems from this extraction and inequality. I’m grappling with what that means for my role in all of this. Philanthropic foundations exist because some people hold resources that should have been distributed more fairly from the start. This is not a controversial statement among those of us doing justice work, yet it remains one of the sector’s most avoided truths.
Before my conversation with Jessyca, I hadn’t fully realized how working within this reality means I’m living with contradiction. I’ve attended conferences where the cost of attendance alone exceeds some organizers’ monthly salaries. I’ve worked at organizations fighting poverty, while the president/CEO earns four times what the people in the communities they serve earn. I’ve witnessed colleagues justify taking positions at institutions whose wealth comes from industries that actively cause harm. These are some of the negotiations I’ve seen while doing justice work within systems built on extraction.
Before I was laid off, removed from the echo chamber, and had time during unemployment to reflect, a part of me felt like I had normalized all of this, like a form of assimilation into spaces that don’t truly challenge the systems that created them. After nearly a decade of working in philanthropy and nonprofit spaces, I can navigate them effectively. I know how to craft stories for grant applications that highlight their fundability. I understand how to present work in ways that make funders comfortable without being too political or radical. These are essential skills; organizations need resources and funding to survive. But this also exposes my own ignorance I had going into this field, all because I’ve been told and taught that this is just “the nature of the work.”
What Jessyca mentioned in our conversation was the mental and emotional toll of this proximity. Doing work for the greater good and securing resources for communities? That part feels rewarding. However, philanthropy has turned achieving justice and collective liberation into a business model. This makes me feel like I’m constantly shifting between worlds based on vastly different values. I start to view movement work through the lens of what’s fundable rather than what’s truly necessary. I become so fluent in the language of philanthropy that I forget it’s a borrowed language from power structures, not the language of the communities I’m aiming to serve.
This is where the accountability that organizations owe to communities—and also the accountability that individuals like me, who operate at this intersection, must hold ourselves to—becomes crucial. To me, it requires constant awareness of who I’m becoming in these spaces and whether that person can still fulfill the work I initially committed to doing.
Since my conversation with Jessyca, I’ve been motivated to continue staying intentional about engaging in work that doesn’t require me to compromise my values. Launching philanthropy unfiltered has been especially important in this regard. It’s a space where I can openly acknowledge contradictions without watering them down, and confront and critique the systems I am navigating in real time. I’ve also found myself drawn back to more grassroots, hands-on work directly with communities, where the language doesn’t need translation and the priorities come from those most impacted.
Second, accountability means being honest about the compromises I make and why I make them. It involves not pretending I’m unaffected by wealth or false consciousness, but recognizing it. Yes, I’ve changed how I speak in certain spaces. Yes, I’ve made career choices influenced by financial stability. Yes, I’ve stayed quiet when I needed to preserve relationships. Acknowledging these realities doesn’t excuse me from them. It keeps me from fooling myself into thinking I operate outside the systems I criticize.
Third, it’s essential to consider whose interests my work benefits. When managing communications for an organization, am I emphasizing what communities need to hear? Am I acting as a genuine and holistic steward of someone’s lived experience? When planning campaigns, am I focusing on what would truly shift power? These questions don’t always have clear answers, and sometimes strategic and principled decisions may not align. Still, asking them regularly keeps me aware of who this work is really for.
What matters most is that I make intentional choices, not simply drifting into such proximity because it’s financially beneficial or convenient, and not automatically rejecting all engagement out of an attachment to righteousness that benefits my ego more than the work.
Proximity to wealth in philanthropy is not neutral. It influences me in ways I haven’t fully realized until I paused to reflect. It can distort my perspective and disconnect me from the communities and movements that originally inspired my commitment to justice work. However, it can also provide information, access, and leverage that, when used strategically, can redirect resources and shift power dynamics.
Ultimately, accountability for practitioners working within extraction-based systems means admitting I’m not unaffected by it all. I’m not saving the sector from itself through my presence. I’m not exempt from complicity just because I recognize or question it. I’m navigating impossible contradictions as carefully as I can, trying to redirect resources toward justice while acknowledging that the systems that produce those resources are fundamentally unjust.
Doing justice work within philanthropy requires me to hold multiple truths at once. Yes, resources are needed, and strategic engagement with funders can help reallocate them. And yes, philanthropy itself is part of the problem—a symptom of systems that concentrate wealth and power in ways that make justice work necessary. I can’t resolve this contradiction by pretending it doesn’t exist. I can only navigate it with as much integrity, awareness, and accountability as I can.
In the end, my integrity depends less on making perfect choices and more on my willingness to stay honest about what those choices cost. I know that proximity to wealth will influence me. My responsibility is to notice how, and to resist when that influence pulls me away from the work I’m driven to do.