Questions I want to ask every left wealthy people organizer, advisor and fundraiser

These are heavily influenced by the work of Linda Burnham and the questions she’s used in her Project 2050. Thank you Linda.

Background and Lineage

1. How did you come to participate in engaging, fundraising, and organizing wealthy people for social justice?

2. What is your class background? How has it shaped your relationship to this work?

3. Who helped you and mentored you in this work?

What’s been learned and tried?

1. What are you most proud of from your work?

2. What perspectives or tools do you use that you found most useful?

3. What do you see as the lineage of your work engaging wealthy people as part of left movements?

4. What stories do you want future generations of leftists and wealthy people organizers to know and understand?

5. What mistakes did you make that you want others to learn from?

Current Assessment

1. What are the strengths of how wealthy people are currently engaged by left movements?

2. What are the challenges and weaknesses with how wealthy people are engaged?

3. What parts of our work and ecosystem are most mature and why?

4. What parts of our work and ecosystem are most in need of development? Why?

What’s next? Looking forward Part 1

Looking ahead to 2050, what’s your best case scenario for how the US Left could be engaging and organizing wealthy people?

1. Which sectors, demographics and geographies must be prioritized to organize the rich into greater alignment with left movements?

2. What kinds of organizations and institutions need to be built?

3. What kinds of connections/relations/networks need to be strengthened or created?

4. What needs to be let go?

5. What needs to change in the world of philanthropy?

6. What needs to change in the world of left organizing?

7. In the relationship between the two?

What’s next? Looking forward Part 2

1. If you could identify two priorities for lefty rich people organizing over the next 5 years, what would it be?

2. What are you working on now, or in the near-term future, that could move the left in the direction of your best-case scenario?

3. What’s something you think is needed in the current moment to move forward wealthy people organizing for social justice?

4. What is your 150 year vision of success?