Many of the Trump administration’s early actions — the immigration crackdown, attacks on DEI, undermining civil rights — are challenging the very foundations of Edgar Villanueva’s work, but that reality appears to energize rather than discourage him.
Case in point: the Decolonizing Wealth Project, the organization Villanueva founded and heads, recently launched two ambitious initiatives. One is a partnership with Melinda French Gates’ philanthropy, Pivotal Ventures, to tackle one of the thorniest issues of our time — youth mental health. The Youth Mental Health Fund, announced in late May, will address the “critical need for culturally responsive mental healthcare for youth navigating intersecting identities and systemic challenges.” The other initiative is even more sweeping: a $1 trillion “Moonshot” that aims to increase “the flow of resources toward economic solidarity, climate and land justice, and wellbeing.”
Villanueva, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, worked in philanthropy for years before publishing “Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance” in 2018. In the book, he urged the sector to examine the sources of its wealth and employ a reparative approach in its funding. This message fuels the Decolonizing Wealth Project, which Villanueva founded the same year the book was published.
The Decolonizing Wealth Project has developed a Reparative Philanthropy Framework to raise funder awareness of past harms and current opportunities, and directs funds with the goal of using money as medicine. The organization’s funding vehicle, Liberated Capital, houses and operates DWP’s grantmaking efforts, using a reparative approach to support Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. As Villanueva explained in an IP guest post in 2020, Liberated Capital employs a DAF structure to move money, but aims to be far more transparent than the typical DAF and uses trust-based philanthropy principles in its operations.
Today, as President Donald Trump targets federal departments and policies that display even a trace of DEI — and as some segments of philanthropy and the corporate world walk back their commitments — the Decolonizing Wealth Project isn’t backing away from its mission. Villanueva contends that reparative work contributes to the wellbeing of all communities.
“We prioritize marginalized communities, but the work that we do is very multiracial,” he said. “The healing programs and sector transformation work is also helping white people find freedom and bridge-building and building multiracial solidarity. The heart of our work is redistributing wealth to those who have been most harmed, but in doing so, there’s a path to healing and wellbeing for people with wealth who have also been harmed by our history of white supremacy. We all have been harmed in different ways and need to be set free from that.”
The Youth Mental Health fund, seeded by Pivotal Ventures
The Youth Mental Health Fund is the first of the Decolonizing Wealth Project’s new initiatives. The $20 million fund will support “culturally responsive mental health and wellness for youth and young adults across the U.S.” Backed by Pivotal Ventures, it’s providing a minimum of $5 million a year over three years to nonprofit organizations and tribes offering mental health services to youth aged 12 to 24. Certainly the need is there: In the midst of a youth mental health crisis, the Trump administration is gutting support for mental and behavioral health programs, including $1 billion in grants for student mental health.
Pivotal Ventures has taken a number of steps to respond to that crisis. To take a couple of recent examples, it was an early supporter of Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving and Young Futures, both of which explore the impact of technology on youth mental health.
DWP, which has received funding from Pivotal Ventures in the past, was one of several organizations Pivotal reached out to when it was planning the new fund. Partnering with the Decolonizing Wealth Project is an opportunity for Pivotal Ventures to increase the reach of its youth mental health work; it also indicates that the organization — and its megadonor founder — aren’t moving away from initiatives that could put them in Trump’s DEI crosshairs.
“Pivotal Ventures wanted to create a fund to fill a gap that they identified in sourcing cultural approaches to mental health for young people,” Villanueva said. He believes Pivotal made the choice to partner with DWP, at least in part, because of DWP’s approach to grantmaking, which is intentionally and comprehensively participatory. DWP also provides general operating support to its grantees, as well as other types of nonfinancial backing.
“My understanding is that they wanted to create a fund that could grow and bring in other funding, and that it would be community-led,” Villanueva said. “They wanted to seed this fund and turn it over so it could be nurtured and grown with a group that has the capacity to move money and community in a different way. It’s a win-win partnership and we’re really excited to be bringing it into the world.”
DWP aims to use participatory methods at every step of the grantmaking process, and is already doing so as the Youth Mental Health Fund gets off the ground. Community members, including youth, helped draft the fund’s request for proposals, for example. “We engage community throughout the process,” Villanueva said. “We want to understand, what are the community priorities? What are the gaps you are seeing? Where is it most important right now to move resources? Our advisory committees across all of our funds serve as strategic advisors to what we fund and how we fund.”
DWP is currently accepting applications for the Youth Mental Health Fund. The deadline is July 10, and funding decisions will be announced by October 15.
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DWP’s trillion-dollar moonshot: “We wanted to put out a bat signal”
The Decolonizing Wealth Project can’t be accused of a failure to think big. Launching a $20 million fund for youth mental health is already a major step; following that, DWP announced an even bolder initiative: a 10-year “Moonshot strategy to catalyze $1 trillion in reparative giving.”
The DWP team began formulating the idea even before Trump was reelected, but the administration’s actions make it particularly timely. The Moonshot also marks the next chapter for DWP after the organization passed the five-year mark and, as Villanueva sees it, notched victories and moved the sector.
“We’ve shifted the conversation in philanthropy; we influenced nearly a billion dollars in new funding for racial and economic justice,” Villanueva said. “Foundations have decided to spend down because of our work. New portfolios have been established. So we know that we have a big influence, a big microphone. We went through a strategy planning process, and we wanted to hone in on, ‘What is our superpower? What is the next big place we want to go?’ We came up with the idea of a Moonshot, and we grappled around the amount — you know, what is realistic? I wanted it to be a number that scared me, that made me hesitate. So we landed on the 10-year, $1 trillion goal.”
The goal may be staggering — arguably unrealistic — but Villanueva believes that not taking action will cost even more. He points out that progressive philanthropy has not kept up with conservative funders, who invested $1 billion in election denial and anti-voting rights organizations between 2020 and 2022, according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. Villanueva also pointed to analysis by the World Economic Forum that found that racial and ethnic inequality in the U.S. has cost $51 trillion since 1990.
“When we think about the history and legacy of harm that we need to repair, and the amount of damage that’s happening now and that will happen over the next couple of years, $1 trillion is just a drop in the bucket,” he said. “We wanted to put out a goal that was a bat signal that would cause people to gasp, but also understand that we can’t win with small dollars.”
$1 trillion over 10 years may be a stretch goal, but philanthropy’s reluctance to make ultra-high commitments — like, for instance, filling the gaps created by the hollowing out of USAID — masks the true breadth of the sector’s resources. Sure, total foundation assets “only” reached $1.5 trillion last year, but the living super-rich can now collectively bring a lot more to the table than legacy foundations. Total annual charitable giving in the U.S. also tops a half-trillion already. And given the first-order crisis liberal philanthropy now faces, perhaps a “moonshot” mindset is exactly what funders need.
For a number of years now, Villanueva has called on philanthropy to scrutinize its past and to be more ambitious in its goals for the future. As he wrote in “Decolonizing Wealth”, he does so based on his personal history with, and hopes for, the sector. He described philanthropy as “the family that embarrasses me and infuriates me. But it’s still my family… It’s from the place of calling this family to a better self that I write.”
Now, he is calling on philanthropy again. In a post describing the Moonshot strategy, Villanueva warned, “Our house of justice and democracy is on fire. Philanthropy has a decision to make — grab the firehose or let our house burn.”
