Core Competencies for Rich People in Left Movements
Core competencies are skills and practices needed to be successful at an activity. In this case, the activity is left power building and the transformation of society.
It would be useful if we articulated the core competencies for rich people to contribute to left movements.1 It could help unite a set of organizations and individuals around a collective project, as no one organization or person will be sufficient support on their own.
Many of these core competencies are being practiced by people with wealth right now within organizations like Solidaire, Resource Generation, Working Families Party, Donors of Color Network, Way to Win, Movement Voter Project, North Star Fund, Thousand Currents, Patriotic Millionaires, Decolonizing Wealth, Grassroots International, Wisdom and Money, and Jubilee Gift.
As well, a whole host of individuals, from well paid donor advisors and money coaches to overworked development directors and thoughtful friends, are helping wealthy people develop and practice a number of the core competencies mentioned below.
There is a whole ecosystem of organizations and individuals to turn to for support and training.
Every rich person has the potential to learn them (even if that’s far from possible today). But they are not a checklist that any one wealthy person can complete. They are skills and practices that need ongoing support to be able to do consistently over a lifetime.
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What are some of the core competencies needed for people with wealth to be powerful participants and leaders within multi-racial, cross-class left movements?
Love yourself, with kindness and patience. Know and value your own self-worth, separate from the money and power you might have or the actions you take in the world. Have a personal or group practice to help you with this. Without this, everything we do rests on a shaky foundation.
Participate in one or more projects that contribute to left, working class led movement building and can serve as a political home base. Participate openly as a rich person. Make sure at least one of the projects you’re involved in gives you the chance to learn with and from other wealthy people. Check out some options here.
Have a multi-year financial plan that boldly and meaningfully donates to and invests in working class movement building, and the equitable distribution of land, wealth and power. Ideally, this financial plan has a long-term goal of ending you and your families reliance on inherited wealth and/or extractive finance to cover your expenses.
Understand and be able to articulate your self-interest in the transition to a more just, equitable and sustainable economy and society.
Have an understanding of racial capitalism, how it has played out in the last few generations of your family, how wealth has been made through slavery, genocide, and theft from extraction and exploitation, and engage in ways to repair those wrongs.
Be able to talk openly about your class position, class background and class patterns. This includes being open and transparent about your wealth, and, when necessary and helpful, being able to talk to the media about your story.
Take responsibility for supporting other people with wealth, and people from similar class positions. This can be in the form of celebrating successes, helping when mistakes are made, leadership development, political education, fundraising, emotional support, challenging conversations, mentoring and more.
Can have a 1–1 with someone who shares your class position and make an ask that moves that person towards greater alignment and support of left movements.
Able and willing to follow the leadership of others, particularly poor and working class people, women and people of color. Enthusiastic participation in projects where you are not in charge.
Willingly receive feedback when you inevitably make mistakes. Have ways of receiving consistent feedback…ie close relationships where honest feedback is given and semi-regular processes to receive group feedback. As well, willingly give direct feedback to help build honest, close relationships, and let people learn from your thinking and perspective.
Under Consideration
Have honest, trusting, close relationships with working class people and working class lefty organizing efforts AND other rich people. Both are important. Relationships are the key!
Leadership roles within wealthy community. The more leadership a rich person takes in wealthy community and in wealthy institutions, the more powerfully they can move rich people and institutions.
Thoughtful and skilled at understanding oppressions and the way they intersect and impact all of us, and our relationships. Particularly, classism, racism, sexism and anti-semitism as key factors in organizing who has wealth and how.
Can navigate and understand the world of numbers, budgets, finance and quantitative analysis. As we transform financial systems and move wealth, skills and confidence around navigating finance are quite useful.2
Left movements? Progressive movements? Liberation movements? Working class movements? What term should I use here?! Reading this now, a few years later, I am less sure than ever that ‘the left’, as we currently understand it, is going to be the driving force in uniting a broad enough set of people behind policies that lead to a healthy, just world. I still consider myself a leftist. But I don’t think that term, ‘the left’, is going to be the banner we ride to victory behind. I do think that multiracial working class movements are what is needed, with a whole slew of us from other class backgrounds joining the team.
I’m going to leave this piece as is, with it’s language of ‘the left’, as long as you know I’d write it differently today (Jan 2025).
Looking back at this now (in 2025), I'd add a core competency about developing wealthy people’s ability to be strategic thinkers. This project, of building left movements and the power of the multiracial working class, needs us to not just blindly follow the most charismatic or oppressed. It needs us to be able to be in dynamic, honest relationships across class where we can challenge and be challenged...and learn together about how to create meaningful cross-class coalitions that win. Reflecting today as I read this article, Left Organizing is in Crisis. Philanthropy is a major reason why.