Foundations as capital accumulators

Over the past two decades, philanthropic foundations have dramatically expanded their financial footprint. US philanthropic foundations, which alone represent over 60% of global foundation assets (Johnson, Reference Johnson2018), have grown from ~$100 billion in 1987 to more than $1.8 trillion in 2025 (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2026). In Canada, between 2008 and 2021, the assets of foundations grew from CAD 35 billion to CAD 135 billion (Fugiel Gartner, Reference Fugiel Gartner2024). Across Europe, the total assets of foundations operating on the continent rose from €433 billion in 2015 (CERPhi, 2015) to €516 billion in 2025 (Philea, 2025). Notably, this growth in European foundation assets exceeded the growth of the entire European economy over the same period. These figures reflect not merely the sector’s financial vitality but its deep embeddedness in the growthism paradigm of global financial markets.

This embeddedness is not incidental but structural. The accumulation of capital by private actors is a necessary precondition for the formation of modern foundations and their ability to intervene as philanthropic actors in society (Guilhot, Reference Guilhot2006). The funds used to establish private foundations generally come from economic activities that have led to an extreme concentration of wealth (Reich, Reference Reich2018). This has been the case since the first major US foundations, established by industrial magnates (dubbed “robber barons” by social critics of the time) whose wealth was built on the creation of monopolies and anti-union practices (Zunz, Reference Zunz2012). Yet it also extends to contemporary foundations that are the product of privatization, monopolization, labor exploitation, and ecological destruction (Gilmore, Reference Gilmore2017; McGoey, Reference McGoey2015). Crucially, this accumulation has been built, historically and in the present, on the dispossession of Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities—through slavery, land seizure, resource extraction, and racialized global supply chains—whose labor and lands generated the wealth that philanthropy now redistributes on its own terms (Kapoor, Reference Kapoor, Hay and Beaverstock2016; Saifer, Reference Saifer2021; Villanueva, Reference Villanueva2018).

Once an initial endowment is established, a philanthropic foundation relies on financial markets to expand its capital stock to generate the income required for its ongoing operations. The higher the return on investment, the greater the resources available for redistribution. In this sense, the degree to which a foundation can act is determined by its ability to function as a capital accumulator in the marketplace. As “hybrid institutions” (Liu & Monier, Reference Liu and Monier2024) that simultaneously pursue a charitable mission and manage a growth-dependent endowment, foundations depend on the continuous profitability of the companies whose shares they hold, functioning as both beneficiaries and agents of a growth-dependent economic system. This dual role generates structural contradictions for foundations, as they end up profiting from the growth of companies and industries that exacerbate the very social and environmental problems that their charitable work seeks to address (McGoey, Reference McGoey2015; Villanueva, Reference Villanueva2018). Legal and tax frameworks reinforce this dynamic by providing significant incentives for capital preservation and growth (OECD, 2020), thereby facilitating the transformation of foundations into quasi-permanent financial institutions that prioritize investing large, upfront donations rather than immediately spending them (Madoff, Reference Madoff2010). Low annual disbursement quotas—set at 5% in Canada and the United States—further entrench this logic of accumulation (Bourgeois, Reference Bourgeois2010; Brody, Reference Brody1997).

Some foundations have attempted to reconcile this logic with their charitable missions through socially responsible investment policies (e.g., fossil fuel divestment, green finance, and impact investing) with the aim of managing social and environmental externalities by generating positive impacts alongside financial returns (Grant-Poitras, Reference Grant-Poitras2025; Odendhal, Reference Odendhal2018; Salomon, Reference Salomon2014). However, these approaches remain oriented toward optimizing returns rather than questioning growth as a foundational premise. Some critical scholars have argued that financial innovations such as Social Impact Bonds function as a Trojan Horse for the marketization of civil society and public services (Eikenberry & Kluver, Reference Eikenberry and Kluver2004; Joy & Shields, Reference Joy and Shields2013), while others contend that responsible and impact investing products lack the transformative capacity to reorient the economy toward genuinely sustainable and equitable ends (Grandjean & Lefournier, Reference Grandjean and Lefournier2021; Tordjman, Reference Tordjman2021). In either case, these financial innovations leave intact the foundational premise that philanthropic capacity depends on the continuous growth of invested capital.

Foundations as growth agents

The relationship between the modern philanthropic foundation and capital accumulation is not unidirectional but reciprocal. While foundations rely on the ongoing accumulation of capital to act, they also function as growth agents, reproducing the very political-economic processes and institutional arrangements that sustain capital accumulation (Guilhot, Reference Guilhot2006). Philanthropic foundations—especially those tied to corporations or wealthy individuals—serve as tools for managing public perception, mitigating the reputational risks associated with profit-making, increasing competitiveness, and maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders (Moran & Branigan, Reference Moran, Branigan, Jung, Philips and Harrow2016).

Within corporate social responsibility (CSR) portfolios, foundations enable firms to allocate a portion of their profits to socially or environmentally oriented causes to strengthen brand equity, improve consumer trust, and secure a “social license to operate” in sensitive or contested markets (Porter & Kramer, Reference Porter and Kramer2006). Whether through environmental remediation, public health initiatives, or educational programs, the grantmaking activities of such foundations serve to repair the reputational damage of firms and business leaders whose wealth was built on exploitative labor and environmental practices (Himmelstein, Reference Himmelstein1997).Footnote ¹ These philanthropic interventions not only improve public perception but also help secure long-term profitability by aligning the firm or founder with public goods and social betterment (Godfrey, Reference Godfrey2005; Lev et al., Reference Lev, Petrovits and Radhakrishnan2010).

Beyond branding and legitimacy, philanthropic foundations function as growth agents by supporting the creation and scaling of new markets, especially in sectors where traditional market mechanisms are perceived as too risky or unprofitable (Roberts, Reference Roberts, Lambin, Roberts and Surender2025). Increasingly, foundations are deploying blended financial instruments (Flammer et al., Reference Flammer, Giroux and Heal2026) to “de-risk” experimental ventures and attract for-profit investment in areas such as education, public health, housing, conservation, and climate adaptation (Sklair & Gilbert, Reference Sklair and Gilbert2022). Through this de-risking, foundations help demonstrate the commercial viability of emerging sectors, often using philanthropic capital to provide guarantees or first-loss investments. This market-making role is particularly evident in international development contexts: foundations backing the Green Revolution, for instance, have pursued food security through agricultural intensification and the integration of smallholder farmers into globalized commodity markets (Morvaridi, Reference Morvaridi2012), while the Mastercard Foundation has funded financial inclusion initiatives in Africa explicitly designed to open new consumer markets for Mastercard’s future growth (Lefèvre & Langevin, Reference Lefèvre and Langevin2020).

Yet the role of growth agent extends beyond market creation, financialization, and the facilitation of “privatization creep” (Brooks & Kumar, Reference Brooks and Kumar2023). During times of crisis or political unrest, philanthropic foundations have acted as buffers, defusing social tensions and absorbing potential challenges to the economic status quo. This function has deep historical roots: the pioneers of modern philanthropy were explicit about philanthropy’s role in preserving the established order and developing a “private alternative to socialism” (Hall, cited in Guilhot, Reference Guilhot2006, p. 10). Andrew Carnegie saw philanthropy as the surest means of resolving class conflict while protecting liberal freedoms of accumulation and redistribution (Carnegie, Reference Carnegie1889/Reference Carnegie2017), a view echoed by Canadian industrialist John W. McConnell, who framed civic philanthropy as the most effective way to improve living conditions “while suppressing revolutionary impulses” (McConnell, cited in Fong, Reference Fong2008, p. 324). This logic persists in contemporary practice: following the 2008 financial crisis, an alliance of US philanthropic foundations mobilized substantial funding to rescue public institutions and support economic revitalization in Detroit after it filed for bankruptcy (Ferriby, Reference Ferriby2016). Here, foundations function as stabilizing mechanisms that absorb the social costs of systemic crises and restore the conditions necessary for capital accumulation.

Foundations have also engaged in the “channeling” of radical social movements, working through restricted grants, strategic partnerships, and institutional gatekeeping to steer activist organizations and civil society groups toward moderate, system-compatible objectives. This dynamic is particularly well-documented in the context of racial justice movements in the United States, where philanthropic funding has historically constrained the ambitions of civil rights (Dunning, Reference Dunning2023; Gavin Marshall, Reference Gavin Marshall2015; Francis, Reference Francis2019) and Mexican-American organizing (Kohl-Arenas, Reference Kohl-Arenas2015), steering them away from structural demands and toward professionalized, funder-legible forms of advocacy. By funding only the most professionalized segments of civil society and excluding more radical environmental or anti-capitalist actors, philanthropic foundations help to contain resistance within acceptable boundaries. This channeling also operates on a larger scale through the systematic underfunding of causes that threaten the growth paradigm, whether in the fight against racial injustice, environmental degradation, or climate change (Desanlis et al., Reference Desanlis, Esmaeili, Janik, Lau and Turnlund2023; Morena, Reference Morena2023). A study conducted by Philea estimated that in 2021, only 0.7% of European foundations’ environmental grants went to initiatives aimed at creating a “new economy” addressing economic growth and overconsumption (Cracknell et al., Reference Cracknell, Khan and et Lombardi2023). Such patterns of underfunding suggest that the boundaries of philanthropic support are often drawn not by the scale of social need but by the imperatives of growth compatibility.

Foundations as ideological promoters

Mainstream philanthropic foundations have served as ideological promoters of growthism by advancing the belief that the private sector—driven by the profit motive, entrepreneurialism, risk tolerance, and market efficiency—is better equipped than the state or civil society to address complex societal problems (Bishop & Green, Reference Bishop and Green2010). Scholars have extensively documented how foundations promote market-based approaches across diverse public policy domains (e.g., Avelar & Ball, Reference Avelar and Ball2019; Morena, Reference Morena2023; Saifer, Reference Saifer2023; Sparke & Levy, Reference Sparke and Levy2023). In the climate field, for instance, Morena (Reference Morena2016) shows that liberal foundations have shaped an international climate regime premised on a non-binding, bottom-up, and market-centered approach—channeling climate action away from structural transformation and toward market-compatible solutions. That growth itself remains unquestioned in these frameworks is starkly illustrated by Darren Walker, former CEO of the Ford Foundation and prominent advocate of justice philanthropy, whose vision of systemic change extends only as far as a transition from “capitalism run amok” to an “inclusive capitalism” harnessing “capitalism’s undeniable productive power to unlock better ideas for humankind” (Walker, Reference Walker2023, p. 6).

A central component of this ideological role is its tendency to reframe systemic and political problems as technical challenges that can be addressed through innovation, education, and improved access to data, rather than through collective struggle or structural transformation (Edwards, Reference Edwards2010). This technocratic reframing depoliticizes social issues by stripping them of their historical and political contexts, casting them instead as problems of optimization, behavioral adjustment, or institutional design (Lefèvre, Reference Lefèvre2015). Large philanthropic actors such as the Gates Foundation illustrate this dynamic well: by advocating scalable, technology-driven interventions while marginalizing approaches rooted in local knowledge (McGoey, Reference McGoey2015), such foundations contribute to the construction of new market-aligned “needs,” reinforcing cycles of intervention and expansion rather than addressing underlying structural causes. Other foundations support this stance by patronizing a broader intellectual infrastructure comprising pro-market think tanks, research centers, and policy institutes that shape knowledge production and public discourse in ways that legitimize neoliberal policy frameworks and marginalize alternative paradigms (Rojc, Reference Rojc2020).

Foundations also function as ideological promoters through the conditions they attach to their funding and the marketized relationships they cultivate with the organizations they support (Nickel & Eikenberry, Reference Nickel and Eikenberry2009). Their interventions emphasize a neoliberal rationality, reconfiguring civil society actors as entrepreneurial subjects in a growth-centered global marketplace (Mitchell & Sparke, Reference Mitchell and Sparke2016). This influence is particularly evident in the popularity of “philanthrocapitalism,” “venture philanthropy,” and other grantmaking approaches that seek to make philanthropy more efficient and results-driven by importing business practices into charitable sector relations. Funded entities are increasingly expected to demonstrate their “return on investment” through performance metrics, outcomes-based reporting, and quantifiable impact assessments that mirror those of for-profit firms (Nickel & Eikenberry, Reference Nickel and Eikenberry2009). As a result, their priorities shift away from long-term structural change or political advocacy and toward short-term, funder-friendly outcomes. This disciplining function operates with particular force on racial justice organizations, which are pressured to translate structural grievances rooted in histories of slavery, colonization, and racial capitalism into measurable, funder-legible outputs, narrowing the scope of permissible demands and foreclosing more radical imaginaries of transformation (Dunning, Reference Dunning2023; Saifer, Reference Saifer2023).

As capital accumulators, growth agents, and ideological promoters, mainstream philanthropic foundations have faced sustained critique for not only failing to redress but also actively reproducing the structural conditions underlying social inequality and ecological degradation. In response, alternative models of philanthropy oriented toward social and environmental justice have gained prominence in both academic and practitioner domains as vehicles for systemic transformation. Yet even as these approaches seek to confront entrenched injustices, their implementation often remains entangled with the growth-oriented paradigms they ostensibly reject. To navigate this tension, we turn to degrowth thinking as a framework for disentangling justice philanthropy from the growth-driven logics that continue to shape its practices.

From capital accumulators to capital decumulators

A degrowth philanthropic praxis must fundamentally reject capital perpetuity as a normative ideal. As UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter (Reference De Schutter2024) points out, abandoning “growthism” involves transcending the logic of financial power to embrace an ethic centered on the realization of human rights and the protection of the environment. When applied to philanthropic foundations, this requires us to reimagine them as capital decumulators: actors who treat capital not as a self-replicating end but as a finite resource to be mobilized in the service of a systemic transition. This amounts to what Ebrahimi (Reference Ebrahimi2024) describes as an “abolitionist” stance, one that envisions a world in which, as systems of social solidarity evolve, private philanthropy becomes neither necessary nor possible. Enacting this shift requires foundations to work against their own conditions of existence. In doing so, the capital decumulator decouples from financial markets and their organizing logic of growth, relinquishing its prior role as capital accumulator.

Whereas socially responsible investment seeks to re-socialize capital accumulation by incorporating Environment, Social, and Governance priorities without questioning growth as a premise, two emerging approaches point instead toward the de-financialization of philanthropy. First, the rise of “sunsetting” foundations (also known as spend-down or limited-life foundations), which “commit to spending all their assets and ceasing operations at the end of a given period or following the achievement of specific objectives” (Mossu & Grant-Poitras, Reference Mossu and Grant-Poitras2025, p. 9), reflects an institutional logic that prioritizes maximizing near-term impact over perpetual existence. The decision to wind down operations is often driven by a recognition of systemic crises and the insufficiency of incrementalism (Hengevoss & von Schnurbein, Reference Hengevoss and von Schnurbein2025). The Ivey Foundation illustrates this logic: after 80 years of existence, this foundation committed to spending its entire endowment over 5 years (2023–2027) to accelerate the transition to a net-zero economy in Canada, at a time when the country is on track to miss its 2030 GHG reduction targets (Linden-Fraser et al., Reference Linden-Fraser, Sawyer, Förg, Griffin and Zhang2026). In doing so, it reconceptualizes the foundation not as an entity whose primary purpose is self-perpetuation, but as one whose resources are most responsibly deployed to address society’s most pressing needs, even at the cost of its own existence.

Second, the practice of “philanthropic class suicide” exemplifies a more radical renunciation of elite positionality. Primarily associated with young “rebellious heirs” who, organized within networks such as Resource Generation in the United States or Resource Movement in Canada, “[…] use inherited wealth to denounce an unequal system from which they have profited” (our translation, Lefèvre, Reference Lefèvre2018, p. 58), this practice involves strategic divestment from class advantage through participatory redistribution and alignment with grassroots movements (Lefèvre, Reference Lefèvre2018; Scully et al., Reference Scully, Rothenberg, Beaton and Tang2018).

Though varying in scope and radicalism, these practices are united by a shared ethical orientation: the relinquishment of financial permanence and the logic of growthism, in favor of political transformation. In this sense, they are not merely strategic responses, but prefigurative acts—embodied experiments in living and organizing otherwise (Yates, Reference Yates2015). Such actions seek to instantiate, in the present, the values and relations of a society beyond growth. Crucially, such practices retain their transformative character only insofar as they resist absorption into the institutional logics they seek to challenge (Dean et al., Reference Dean, Honeywell, Price, Eikenberry, Mirabella and Sandberg2019). The construction of alternative economic forms within existing structures is itself a mode of prefigurative politics that enacts, rather than merely advocates for, the conditions of a future freed from growthism (Schiller-Merkens, Reference Schiller-Merkens2024). As Heckler et al.’s (Reference Heckler, Eikenberry and Love2025) critical examination of the regulatory basis of charitable perpetuity suggests, however, the shift from capital accumulator to capital decumulator requires a concurrent elimination of the legal provisions that institutionalize and protect this “exceptional privilege.” By proposing a 21-year limit for foundations to disburse their capital, ideally toward communities economically dispossessed by the very accumulation processes that generated the philanthropic assets in question, the authors highlight that voluntary ethical commitments alone are insufficient to address the “morally and empirically problematic” (p. 13) underpinnings of foundation perpetuity without corresponding shifts in the legal architecture of philanthropy.

From growth agents to solidarity vehicles

A degrowth praxis requires a profound reorientation of philanthropic foundations away from their role as agents that reproduce and help stabilize growth-driven economic paradigms to vehicles of solidarity capital for post-growth futures. Specifically, foundations should foster and sustain initiatives within the degrowth movement that adhere to principles of economic democracy and commons-oriented governance (Durand et al., Reference Durand, Hofferberth and Schmelzer2024). This involves financing a variety of collective experiments and “real utopias” (Wright, Reference Wright2010) that enable communities to reconfigure economic life on their own terms (Gibson-Graham et al., Reference Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healy2013).

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated the efficacy of alternative care models in mitigating systemic vulnerabilities on a broad scale, underscoring the critical importance of community-based infrastructures—such as mutual aid networks (Chevée, Reference Chevée2022) and care-mongering initiativesFootnote ² (Kipp & Hawkins, Reference Kipp and Hawkins2022)—in addressing urgent needs during times of crisis. Beyond the pandemic, the reorientation of solidarity capital toward initiatives such as worker and housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and analogous organizational models that prioritize social reproduction over capital accumulation presents a crucial strategy for advancing the goals of degrowth (Banerjee et al., Reference Banerjee, Jermier, Peredo, Perey and Reichel2021). For example, a group of Montreal-based foundations decided to pool their resources to support “Bâtiment 7,” a private industrial site reclaimed by the community to host a variety of grassroots projects addressing the needs of people living in poverty and facing marginalization (Grant-Poitras & Lefèvre, Reference Grant-Poitras, Lefèvre, Alalouf-Hall, Bergeron and Fontan2022). More horizontal funding mechanisms were co-developed by Bâtiment 7 activists, participating foundations, and researchers to meet their aspirations for direct democracy, collective autonomy, and social inclusion (Grant-Poitras & Lefèvre, Reference Grant-Poitras, Lefèvre, Alalouf-Hall, Bergeron and Fontan2022). This case illustrates concretely how foundations can collaborate with communities to support post-growth institutions grounded in the logic of the commons.

In their capacity as vehicles of solidarity capital, philanthropic foundations should continue to support the material needs of the most marginalized populations during the transition toward a degrowth paradigm. In contexts where neoliberal austerity has eroded state welfare systems and deepened the precarity of vulnerable populations, foundations’ organizational agility offers a vital counterbalance (Anheier & Leat, Reference Anheier and Leat2013). However, this role must be reconceptualized—not as an act of charity or benevolence, but as a critical element within a broader structural effort to democratize care systems and decommodify essential services (Dukelow & Murphy, Reference Dukelow and Murphy2022).

To effectively operationalize these principles, philanthropic foundations must adopt grantmaking strategies that prioritize facilitating resource transfers that empower communities to establish democratic control over their economic futures. Emerging research on capital transfer (e.g., Longtin, Reference Longtin2024) provides crucial insights into how philanthropic actors can support locally driven alternatives, while avoiding processes of co-optation, institutionalization, and deradicalization that have historically undermined the relations between foundations and social justice movements (e.g., Dunning, Reference Dunning2023; Marquez, Reference Marquez2003; Francis, Reference Francis2019; Saifer & Zanoni, Reference Saifer and Zanoni2024). The McConnell Foundation’s $30 million transfer to Indigenous-led community foundations in Canada illustrates what this looks like in practice. Rather than disbursing funds through conventional grant conditions, the foundation transferred capital directly and unconditionally, enabling recipient organizations to deploy resources entirely on their own terms (McConnell Foundation, 2025). The transition from growth agent to solidarity vehicle is not merely a programmatic adjustment but a fundamental reorientation of philanthropic purpose away from stabilizing the conditions of capital accumulation and toward actively cultivating the democratic, community-rooted alternatives that a degrowth transition requires.

From ideological promoters to growth objectors

A degrowth philanthropic praxis requires foundations to repurpose their influence, not to reinforce but to challenge the ideological underpinnings of growthism. This means using their financial assets alongside their social and cultural capital to advocate for, and advance, discourses centered on ecological limits, sufficiency, care, and democratic planning.

At the organizational level, this ideological shift requires a fundamental change in philanthropic practices. Dominant metrics of success, such as cost-effectiveness, scale, and quantitative performance indicators, are at odds with the epistemological commitments of degrowth, which prioritize qualitative change, relational dynamics, and long-term systemic transformation. Models such as trust-based philanthropy are emerging to foster funding relationships grounded not in donor control and compliance but in collaboration, transparency, and grantee autonomy (Maradeix et al., Reference Maradeix, Gautier and Pache2025). Morena’s (Reference Morena2023) conception of “climate justice philanthropy” similarly calls on foundations to engage in the fight against climate change by adopting a non-elitist, committed stance that is driven by justice, critical of its own practices, and open to learning.

Beyond their internal practices, researchers have long documented the ideological work of philanthropic foundations in amplifying the work of academics, think tanks, and research centers (e.g., McLevey, Reference McLevey2014). The Volkswagen Foundation, for example, funded the initial research behind the Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al., Reference Meadows, Meadows and Randers1972), which helped catalyze a body of scholarship that has since become foundational to degrowth thinking. A degrowth philanthropic praxis would further direct this amplificatory capacity toward grassroots movements promoting local economic resilience, decentralization of power, post-growth economics, and sustainable livelihoods. The David Suzuki Foundation illustrates what this amplificatory capacity can look like in practice: by housing, funding, and supporting the Canadian iteration of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, it has helped build an initiative with strong affinities with the degrowth movement that seeks to replace GDP with indicators of progress rooted in social justice and planetary health (Kaleem, Reference Kaleem2023). Foundations are also well-equipped to engage in coalition building (Masters & Osborn, Reference Masters and Osborn2010) and convening (Fontan et al., Reference Fontan, Martinez-Cosio, Rabinowitz Bussell and Pole2023) within and across the philanthropic sector to educate and challenge other sector actors. Le (Reference Le2025) points to the strategic playbook of conservative US philanthropy—institution-building, leadership pipelines, and narrative control—as an instructive, albeit uncomfortable, model of what sustained ideological investment can achieve. While these roles are not new to justice philanthropy, a degrowth approach requires foundations to use these tools to oppose, rather than reinforce, growthism as expressed through projects such as sustainable development, techno-solutionism, geoengineering, and “green” and inclusive growth (Hickel, Reference Hickel2020; Latouche, Reference Latouche2009; Parrique, Reference Parrique2022).

As growth objectors, philanthropic foundations have the potential to play a critical role in formal political advocacy that challenges the policies underpinning growthism. The Canadian context illustrates the advocacy capacity foundations can bring to bear in advancing social justice goals aligned with degrowth’s redistributive commitments, even when the specific causes at stake do not explicitly contest the growth paradigm. Foundations were instrumental in advocating for reforms to Canada’s disbursement quota regime, eventually enacted through the Budget Implementation Act, 2022, which increased minimum payout requirements for grantmaking foundations (Ahmad & Saifer, Reference Ahmad and Saifer2024) and introduced “qualifying disbursement” provisions enabling charities to fund nonqualified donees, including many grassroots and social movement organizations traditionally excluded from philanthropic funding (Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon et al., 2024). These examples demonstrate that foundations can act as effective policy advocates for redistributive and structural change, a capacity that, when directed by a degrowth orientation, could be deployed to challenge the institutional and fiscal architecture of growthism itself.

In Quebec, the “Collectif des fondations contre les inégalités” encouraged foundations to join forces to urge the government to fully assume its role in combating poverty and social inequality, particularly through a more equitable tax system (Berthiaume & Lefèvre, Reference Berthiaume, Lefèvre, Fontan, Elson and Lefevre2017). While aligned with degrowth’s redistributive commitments, a more assertive degrowth stance could have led the Collectif to advocate implementing a guaranteed minimum income coupled with an acceptable maximum income—a policy strongly championed within the degrowth movement (Liegey et al., Reference Liegey, Madelaine, Ondet and Veillot2014). However, philanthropic engagement in the political realm is not without its complexities. A central critique of philanthropy is its inherently anti-democratic nature (Reich, Reference Reich2018), insofar as it enables the ultra-wealthy to exert disproportionate influence over public policy, often reinforcing neoliberal logics and the privatization of public goods (Eikenberry & Mirabella, Reference Eikenberry and Mirabella2018). As such, any foundation-led political advocacy must be grounded in solidarity with grassroots actors and accountable to the broader movement for systemic transformation.

The shift from affirming to contesting growthism through philanthropic praxis is not simply a matter of adjusting strategic priorities. It represents a profound transformation in how philanthropic foundations engage with the ideological and political landscape. Foundations committed to social justice are ideologically invested, but as Jensen’s (Reference Jensen2013) analysis of foundations committed to addressing racial inequality reveals, this ideological investment is often less about redressing injustice than about securing philanthropy’s own institutional legitimacy. A degrowth praxis demands, instead, that foundations reimagine themselves not merely as financial actors but as ideological agents capable of contesting, rather than reproducing, the cultural and institutional conditions that sustain growthism and, by extension, institutional philanthropy itself. In doing so, foundations become not merely critics of the existing order but active participants in the cultural and political work of constructing the conditions under which a just and ecologically viable post-growth society becomes imaginable.