A moment of thanks.
Hey folks. This is the 20th edition of The Great Near - the last post of the year! This is coming a bit later than I hoped. After wondering for days why my brain felt like mashed potatoes, I tested positive for COVID. I’m in the clear now but appreciate the patience. Stay safe wherever you are, Omicron is no joke.
It’s been a big year: 20 posts with nearly 20,000 views and a few hundred subscribers (!!!) Thanks to everyone who made this project possible, from my colleagues at Common Future to our network and new readers 👋 who joined along the way. The last few weeks have been a time to pause and reimagine the kind of stories we want to tell in TGN. I’m excited to share more on that in January. Here’s looking back at the year and sharing a few fun links because I can’t help myself.
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Looking Back…
The Great Near launched in March to shed light on the systems and actors that cause economic inequality while uplifting solutions that are restoring wealth in communities. That has included successful models from leaders who I’m privileged to know through my work at Common Future; those who are “reimagining capitalism” and putting capital to work for people of color, rural communities, immigrants, and others who have been excluded from our economy. Too often, their work is overlooked, underfunded, or minimized under labels like “impractical” or “idealistic.”
But it’s just not true. Bold, promising ideas are everywhere:
RUNWAY launched the first UBI program for Black entrepreneurs;
this policy coalition pushed for new corporate incentives that prioritize stakeholders over shareholders;
everything that The Guild, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, and others have done to democratize real estate ownership;
this character-based lending fund designed by and for BIPOC entrepreneurs;
this grassroots collaborative is directing integrated capital to BIPOC farmers in California;
a new fund is helping employees of color become company owners (and similar work from Urban Manufacturing Alliance and Concerned Capital);
solutions to break up corporate monopolies;
and so much more (seriously this list took me like 15 minutes).
These ideas will blossom and grow with attention and resources—that’s why TGN features this work. So before I sign off for the year, here are a few highlights from this past one:
We looked at Google trends to better understand corporate racial equity commitments around the one-year mark of George Floyd’s murder last June
This list of 10 “access to capital” reforms covering things like credit score alternatives, community financial institutions, and equity crowdfunding
This three-part series explored the responsibility of business: from the evolution of social entrepreneurship to a model from Aaron Tanaka over at the Center for Economic Democracy, the social justice enterprise
TGN’s most popular piece yet 👉 “Don’t Be Fooled by Corporate Commitments to Racial Equity,” including a tracker we compiled for public transparency
My personal favorite: interviewing my colleague, Eric Horvath, about everything he learned building a character-based lending fund
We reflected on the problems with top-down knowledge curation, data collection, and harmful funder dynamics in the nonprofit world
This very cool policy coalition promoting stakeholder capitalism
We experimented with The Great Near & Far: weekly curations highlighting the best things my team is reading about power, systems, and the economy.
A bit of gratitude…
On a personal note, this project has been more challenging than I could have expected. And though I’m the one putting pen to paper, people much smarter than me help to make this possible. A big thanks to the Common Future team, with a special shoutout to Allison Jones, Cristina Díaz Borda, Eric Horvath, Kathryn Jaynes, Lauren Paul, Rodney Foxworth, and Ronilsy Diaz. I also want to tip my hat to the publications and writers whose work I reference often: Next City and Oscar Perry Abello, Nonprofit Quarterly, YES! Magazine, NonprofitAF and Vu Le, the Community Credit Lab team, Aaron Tanaka, American Economic Liberties Project and Matt Stoller, Popular Information, HEATED, and oh so many more.
A peek at where we’re going…
For a while now, I’ve said that I want this space to feature more than my voice. I’m the first to admit that I didn’t pull that off this year. If you stick around, that will change! We’re relaunching TGN with a new look and feel, posting schedule, and team to build this into something magical. We’re doubling down on two things: breaking down big questions about the economy in plain language, and profiling the people at the forefront of exciting solutions (and no, I’m not talking Silicon Valley types).
Things to click on…
an investigation into caregiving
the coolest solutions of the year
new years resolutions from humanity’s greatest thinkers (re-sharing for timeliness)
One last note…
This newsletter is free and open to all. So much work goes into making this possible, so if you’d like to say thanks, consider sharing The Great Near with a friend or two. Just hit forward in your inbox or send them this link!
until 2022!
caitlin