‘There’s nowhere near enough funding’ - Jo Swinson on pushing the frontiers of new economic thinking as Trump era returns
Partners for a New Economy – whose members include the Ford and Omidyar foundations – has given more than $34m to those forging alternative economic models. But is it working? As Trump returns to the White House, the organisation’s director and former UK political party leader Jo Swinson tells us what needs to happen to sustain a dispersed but growing movement.
In 2015, a handful of philanthropic foundations that funded conservation wondered why – despite their efforts – environmental degradation was only getting worse. The feeling was, as Mava Foundation’s Lynda Mansson put it, “that we had been trying to fix mega problems with nano solutions”.
Realising that the problem was in fact the underlying economic system, they created Partners for a New Economy (P4NE), a pooled fund that provides grants to organisations “pushing the frontiers of alternative economic thinking and working to change the rules, goals and mindsets underpinning our economic systems”.
P4NE’s definition of the “new economy” is broad, encompassing many who label their work in other terms like the wellbeing economy, regenerative economics, Indigenomics, the civic economy, and so on. In practice, that means funding areas as wide-ranging as education, banking and finance, narrative and culture change, and policy. It also aims to build the field, through leadership training and networking, for example.
The initial focus of the fund was deliberately experimental, but sharing the risk meant the foundations could back “long-shot ventures – some of which paid off and some of which did not”, as Mansson, who was P4NE’s first president of the board, writes on its website. Today, P4NE says the biggest impacts of its grants often come years later, long after reports have been submitted.
The founding partners – Mava, Oak, Marisla and KR Foundations – have since been joined by more big hitters: the Ford and Hewlett Foundations and Omidyar Network (the Mava Foundation closed in 2023). To date P4NE, which is coordinated by a team hosted by the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation, has made grants totalling more than US$34m.
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Some P4NE grantees
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Pioneers Post spoke to P4NE director, Jo Swinson, on the sidelines of its Brussels conference in November 2024, where some of the 200 attendees urged more unity among a splintered progressive movement to take on the rising far right.
Swinson (pictured above) was previously a member of parliament, government minister and briefly leader of the UK Liberal Democrat party, before losing her seat in 2019. Speaking just days after the US presidential election, she told us what’s next for the new economy movement amid a second Trump term, why funding is still insufficient, and a key lesson learned from a career in politics.
Pioneers Post: What does the US election result mean for this movement’s work?
Jo Swinson: It’s obvious that there are many practical ways in which things will become harder… It’s important to not underplay that things are going to be more difficult because of what’s happening, but also not to fall into the trap of despair.
Because what happened last time? Actually, loads of American states stepped up because they could see that climate change was still an issue and they needed to address it. Lots of businesses also said, ‘Well, regardless of what the American government is saying, we’re also going to be engaged in this.’ And the ecological crisis will keep on coming, so the case for action is going to be stronger than ever. So yes, in many ways, it will be harder, but it’s important to keep on with the work.
There are obviously different views about how excited or otherwise people were about the alternative, and is that new economic alternative really being offered in a political sense? There’s a very understandable viewpoint that says it’s not, really… Can this be a moment to also focus minds on the importance of dealing with these economic issues? Because I’m certain that Trump’s agenda isn’t the solution, but there are real economic grievances that are understandable, that are part of what’s driving people to Trump and indeed, to other populist leaders.
PP: How do you build a new economy when people seem to be voting for the opposite?
JS: Well, it’s hard, right? But… there is a story to tell about how changing the economy will be one that is better for people’s lives, where it’s more focused on the things that actually matter to people.
…There are now 27 governments across the OECD who are now finding beyond-GDP indicators – different ways of measuring what matters to people. So you start to highlight the health and the wellbeing and the social cohesion and issues of belonging. We’ve got these crises of loneliness and mental health problems. That kind of fear and unrest can be mined by populist leaders, but it’s a genuine set of problems that changing the economy can also help to solve. Getting out of that kind of policy wonk space, and into that narrative and that communication about what’s going to make people’s lives better, I think, is part of the job that needs to happen.
This is a movement where you need many different voices, right? That’s not going to be the job of a philanthropic foundation to take on that particular mantle. But we have organisations like NEON, the New Economy Organisers Network, who are working with people who are doing that narrative communications work.
Getting out of that policy wonk space, and into that narrative about what’s going to make people’s lives better, is part of what needs to happen
PP: You’re not in politics now; if you were, what would be your priority right now?
JS: Part of the challenge with politics is that there are lots of priorities, because everything happens all at once, and you’re trying to find solutions for thousands of people in your own constituency and millions of people across the whole country.
Changing the way we measure economic success so that you centre people’s lives feels really important. We use GDP as this proxy. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t have growth of some things – there are definitely sectors that we need to grow, but we should measure the things that actually matter and focus on those.
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Another agenda, which I think is really vital, is this one of our future generations, and I think this is a framing that really helps us to focus, to be able to make some long-term decisions…What I like about that framing is it’s a very unifying frame – it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the left or the right of the political spectrum: doing right by future generations is something which people can get behind. And trying to make sure there is a voice for that future in our decision-making. There are different mechanisms to do that – Wales has got their Future Generations Commissioner, the EU has now got a commissioner on intergenerational fairness, I know that John Bird [co-founder of the Big Issue magazine and member of the UK’s House of Lords] has been pushing for a bill for future generations in Westminster… I think that’s an agenda which politically can get some traction and can also lead to much better decisions. It helps to get out of that kind of short-termist, 24/7, social-media, political cycle, which doesn’t necessarily result in the best decision-making. And I think some of the dissatisfaction that people have with politics is because they recognise that it’s not necessarily doing them a service, but we’re kind of stuck in this cycle.
PP: Going back to funding for the new economy: where is that money going to come from, and do we have enough of it?
JS: There’s much more funding than there was 10 years ago, because this was very, very niche 10 years ago. But there’s nowhere near enough.
Philanthropic foundations are obviously one way. In some cases, it’s next-generation wealth holders who are inheriting wealth and want to do something different with it… to have a positive, future-focused legacy that is solving the problem. I think for many there’s a move away from philanthropy as trying to fix the consequences of a problem, to actually trying to address the root causes.
And that’s where this new economics work is particularly impactful. As Partners for a New Economy, we’re doing outreach to other foundations and we’re developing some learning materials to help other funders start to engage with this, and to [help them] answer questions like: how does this connect to the work that you already do – if you’re funding health, how could you think about how economic systems are actually impacting on health? What are the ways in which you could then fund some organisations that are trying to address the economic root causes of ill health, and the same for climate, or young people, and so on.
If you’re funding health, how could you think about how economic systems are actually impacting on health?
PP: Is that something that governments might also be convinced to fund?
JS: I think it depends on the work. There’s a massive, €10m project on what the post-growth future looks like – the European Research Council has funded Professor Julia Steinberger, Giorgos Kallis and Jason Hickel [a leading name in the degrowth debate] to look at that. Some of the organisations that we fund receive funding from European bodies also – Zoe Institute for Future-Fit Economies would be a good example. But in some cases, [for example] when you’re talking about NGOs that are advocating for change, some of that does need to come from philanthropic sources.
In some cases there are memberships… Finanzwende [a citizens’ movement association that advocates reforms to the financial markets] is an example in Germany. We’ve granted to them but they’ve also got a lot of people on the ground who are very exercised about the way the finance system works and have actually joined and pay regular money. So there’s a mix of funding, but there’s definitely a greater role for philanthropic funding, and we want to crowd in more.
PP: What’s your biggest lesson from a career in politics that you’re bringing to this space?
JS: You need to form alliances, and you need to work with people with whom you don’t 100% agree…in this agenda, you need the likes of [former governor of the Bank of England] Mark Carney and [climate change activist] Greta Thunberg, right? They need to be on the same side.
Some people will take the view that that ‘work with the current system’ approach is not radical or ambitious enough. Other people will take the view that really calling out starkly what the science says is too scary and is too radical. I think, in reality, you need these different voices to be working together, at least loosely, and sometimes disagreeing, but not fighting among each other.
When we were in government, we worked alongside the Conservatives. Was that easy for myself as a Liberal Democrat? No, it was not. But were there some things that we managed to achieve as a result of it? Yeah: introducing shared parental leave, improving consumer rights, flexible working…
I think [only working with people you 100% agree with] has been a big problem, and that’s why we have a gathering like today, where we bring people together, people who are working on education, on finance, in research, in universities, in narrative and communications, building movements and organising. All those different elements, and with some differences on how radical the solutions that they would like to see. But they all want to see economies that are changed, to make sure they serve people and nature. So we should work together on that.
Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity. Top picture: Jo Swinson at the P4NE conference November 2024 (credit: Martin Pilette / P4NE)
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