Economy and Society

Initiative Overview

The Economy and Society Initiative works to identify and help spread ideas from across the ideological spectrum about what’s next for capitalism in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century so all people thrive. In 2024, ESI awarded $33.2M through 49 grants.

Grants

Priorities

Identify the best new thinking across the ideological spectrum that explores the relationship between governments and markets to increase U.S. competitiveness and improve the lives of working people and their families.
Help synthesize and popularize ideas that can make up a new common sense about the economy.

Strategy

Economy and Society

Our Economy and Society Initiative makes grants to identify and help spread ideas from across the ideological spectrum that will inform what comes next for capitalism in the U.S. and in democratic societies around the world.

A half century of neoliberal consensus about the primacy of markets has broken down because it no longer offers solutions to our most pressing problems, from the existing impacts on communities hollowed out by the decline of U.S. manufacturing to the increasing impacts of climate change. We fund work in both emerging areas of post-neoliberal consensus like antitrust, labor, trade, and industrial policy, as well as big-picture thinking about how the economy should be organized in order to prioritize the needs of working people and their families.

Read the strategy