The New Labor Movement Is Having a Moment. Here Are Eight Funders That Have Its Back

Amazon Labor Union organizers in Staten Island. Luigi Morris/shutterstock

The past several years haven’t been great for the nation’s workers, but they’ve been quite promising for a reinvigorated labor movement. When COVID hit, people witnessed firsthand the essential role of workers in low-paying service industries, most of whom do not benefit from traditional union infrastructure. Increased awareness of their struggles, alongside a tight labor market and a (relatively) pro-labor White House, has helped shape a national climate more favorable to labor organizing than it’s been in decades.

A recent Gallup poll shows that 68% of the American public approve of labor unions, way up from a low of around 48% back in 2009. By Gallup’s reckoning, the last time Americans felt so good about unions was over a half-century ago. Especially during the past year, worker organizers have notched some promising wins on the ground, including the recently founded Amazon Labor Union’s improbable victory at a Staten Island warehouse. Workers at Starbucks, Apple, REI, Conde Nast, John Deere and Kellogg are also organizing, just to name a few. 

Philanthropy’s role in these on-the-ground organizing efforts often ranges from limited to nonexistent — backing unions directly is considered a form of lobbying, and thus off the table for most foundations and other 501(c)(3) funders. But that hasn’t stopped workers’ rights funders from supporting movement-aligned nonprofits and policy shops whose long-term advocacy has helped set the stage for the current moment.

Many of the philanthropic funders behind new labor movement nonprofit groups have supported the work for a while. Others are relative newcomers, and that includes several uber-wealthy individuals — a group of donors who traditionally look askance at labor organizing. As elsewhere, collaborative funding around this issue is also on the rise. Here are eight labor funders to keep an eye on right now.

Omidyar Network

Let’s start with a newer player. The Omidyar Network is an unusual labor movement funder in that it’s the giving vehicle of a living billionaire. With the exception of a handful of progressive stalwarts like George Soros and Barbara Picower, the uber-rich tend to congregate predictably in the management camp and avoid labor funding. Yet as of 2020, Pierre Omidyar’s been explicitly backing worker power through the Omidyar Network’s Reimagining Capitalism initiative, and pairing that with funding for causes like financial sector oversight, challenging monopolies, and questioning shareholder primacy. That’s pretty radical stuff for a billionaire donor. It remains to be seen how the ongoing tech stock rout may affect Omidyar’s appetite for giving, but as of right now, Reimagining Capitalism remains well-resourced.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Another newer arrival, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is backing new labor movement groups like One Fair Wage, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) and the National Employment Law Project (NELP) as part of its overall push to address public health’s social determinants. The link between health and worker empowerment has grown even more abundantly clear during the pandemic, which has highlighted the nation’s woeful status quo around policies like paid sick leave and worker protections. RWJF’s support is a good illustration that labor support isn’t just for “labor funders.” It’s a worthy inclusion in the toolbox of any funder looking to challenge systemic inequities at the root.

Ford Foundation

The prototypical big progressive foundation always ends up on these sorts of lists, and deservedly so. Ford has long been a stalwart new labor movement funder, backing almost every key player in the national ecosystem — from NDWA, One Fair Wage, NELP and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and the Partnership for Working Families. Ford has also been a vital supporter of labor-friendly Beltway policy shops like the Economic Policy Institute. Recently, we’ve seen Ford join forces with funders like OSF, Omidyar and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund to amplify worker voices around the globe through collaborative efforts like Funders Organized for Rights in the Global Economy (FORGE).

James Irvine Foundation

The Irvine Foundation is a state-based funder, but that state is California, with an economy comparable in size to that of the United Kingdom. California also plays host to some of the nation’s most glaring inequities. Since around 2016, empowering the state’s low-wage workers has been Irvine’s sole focus. The foundation’s been looking to act as a model for philanthropies elsewhere in the country, drawing on California’s relatively labor-friendly state politics to score cross-sector wins. Irvine also supports many of the major national new labor movement nonprofits, including ROC United, NDWA and NELP — as well as numerous nonprofit organizing groups based in the Golden State.

William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

Like Omidyar, this isn’t your typical labor funder. The Hewlett Foundation’s approach to economic issues hasn’t been a solely progressive one in the past, having encompassed moderate and even libertarian angles. But like Omidyar, Hewlett has nevertheless leaned into a critique of capitalism as it stands. In classic Hewlett fashion, the foundation’s economic justice funding favors a brainy approach with numerous grants for academic work and think tanks. Hewlett’s Economy and Society Initiative has provided over $40 million to five universities in the quest for a successor paradigm to neoliberalism, with a portion of that funding occurring in partnership with the Omidyar Network. And smaller grants to labor-friendly policy shops continue to go out the door.

LIFT Fund

The collaborative LIFT Fund (which stands for Labor Innovations for the 21st Century) has been around for a decade, but it’s a good example of the ongoing uptick in philanthropic collaboration giving the new labor movement a boost. Last year, LIFT debuted a headline grantmaking initiative, the Southern Workers Opportunity Fund, which is seeking to move $20 million to back labor organizing in the South. So far, the fund has secured around $14 million from a diverse group of backers including Ford and Kellogg, as well as RWJF, Surdna, the Babcock Foundation and the Tara Health Foundation. Two national unions, AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, have also chipped in as funders.

Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation

Founded in 2016, the Restaurant Workers’ Community Foundation is industry-specific rather than geography-specific, and came together to fund progressive organizations that have restaurant workers’ backs. It’s not as big in dollar terms as some of the other funders on this list, but it hit its stride as COVID struck, raising millions for crisis relief assistance to workers in the industry — including undocumented workers. It’s one example of how COVID has drawn attention to the struggles of essential workers, and how funding flowed in response, bolstering new avenues for labor movement funding that can bridge crisis relief and longer-term worker empowerment.

MacKenzie Scott?

A bit of wishful thinking here. New labor movement groups are exactly the sort of thing you’d expect a donor like Scott to back, especially given her concern for equity and for underserved communities. And in fact, she has given to a couple of labor movement nonprofits, including NDWA and One Fair Wage, but only in her first big grant drop. There’s been a notable absence in similar funding since then — even as Scott and Dan Jewett have showered billions on national service organizations working to offset poverty stemming, in no small part, from worker disempowerment. It could be a little awkward, given that the source of Scott’s wealth is Amazon, a big bad for the labor movement, but getting behind worker empowerment would go a long way toward multiplying the long-term impact of Scott’s historic giving.

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The eight funders above are only a few names to note in a field that most of philanthropy still passes by, despite some recent gains. Other important new labor movement funders we could mention include the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the General Service Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Surdna Foundation, among others. There’s also Barbara Picower’s JPB Foundation — another one of those rare examples of a major living donor backing this work.

While philanthropy remains a difficult fit with union-based labor organizing — due mainly to the legal hurdles involved — the need for nonprofit funding in this space remains acute. In addition to nonprofit groups that serve organizers on the ground, backing for pro-labor policy on the Beltway is also crucial, as is philanthropic backing to support a more labor-friendly judiciary. While the deck remains stacked against workers in the halls of power and in the courts, long-term, concerted philanthropic funding is one big reason it got that way. It’ll take a similar effort pulling in the other direction to right the ship.