June 2, 2025
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Press Release
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New York, NY (June 2, 2025) Today, Decolonizing Wealth Project (DWP) announced a bold 10-year Moonshot strategy to catalyze $1 trillion in reparative giving. The strategy is designed to fundamentally transform philanthropy and accelerate social progress. This ambitious goal reflects both the urgency of the moment and the scale of resources required to repair historical and systemic harm and build a future rooted in collective wellbeing.
Since its founding in 2018, DWP has sparked a global movement grounded in a radical yet simple idea: money can be medicine. Through the framework of reparative philanthropy, the organization has reshaped the philanthropic landscape, mobilizing nearly $1 billion - including over $21 million through its fund, Liberated Capital. DWP challenges top-down, colonial funding models by aligning resources with responsibility, providing visibility, momentum, and support to often-overlooked movements and communities. Over the past seven years, the organization has brought together 700 values-aligned donors, influenced major institutions and corporations, and transformed philanthropic culture. Now, through Moonshot, DWP is calling on the sector to move beyond incremental change and toward transformational investment and repair.
“Philanthropy has long treated justice like a side project, but as unprecedented crises rage, the time for half-measures is over,” said Edgar Villanueva, Founder and CEO of the Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital. “With Moonshot, we’re calling on the sector to meet this moment with the scale and courage it demands. $1 trillion isn’t just a number - it’s really just a drop in the bucket for what it will take to repair harm, rebuild systems, restore programs and reimagine a future where all communities can thrive. This is about turning money into medicine, and moving from intention to action.”
The numbers are clear. Since 1990, racial and ethnic inequities have cost the U.S. economy $51 trillion in lost output. Systemic racism alone has drained an estimated $21.3 trillion through suppressed wages, lost business revenue, and disparities in homeownership over the past 24 years. At the same time, the largest transfer of wealth in history, estimated to be $84 million over the next 20 years, is underway; yet, too much of that capital remains idle.
This is not only about the money sitting in banks, but also the vast sums being actively invested in harm. In the last election, $1 billion was spent to suppress voting rights, target immigrants, and strip millions of Americans of the lifesaving care and resources they need. These are just a few examples of how wealth is being used to dismantle democracy and negatively transform the fabric of our country. This moment calls for a reckoning with where money is flowing and a bold reallocation of resources, not only to repair the past, but to secure a just and democratic future.
That call is now more urgent than ever. Despite countless pledges and panels, the sector has failed to do what matters most: move money. With more than a trillion dollars sitting in philanthropic assets—and billions more growing in donor-advised funds—DWP’s 10-year Moonshot strategy chooses healing over hoarding. The organization is meeting this moment with clarity and courage, committing to unlock $1 trillion in reparative giving over the next decade. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that matches the urgency and scale of the challenge ahead.
“DWP’s trillion-dollar moonshot is more than audacious aspiration. It’s a clarifying clarion call to philanthropy and civil society to invest at the scale of the transformation needed to build the kind of society our communities deserve. And the time value of our money has never been greater. They are the right team at the right time to make sure we do the right thing,” shared Dwayne S. Marsh, President and CEO, Northern California Grantmakers.
The Moonshot is much more than a vision; it is a $1 trillion movement already in motion.
To learn more, visit: https://www.decolonizingwealth.com/moonshot
About the Decolonizing Wealth Project:
Decolonizing Wealth Project (DWP) is committed to bringing truth, healing, and repair to the global community. Established in 2018, and led by Edgar Villanueva, an Indigenous, award-winning author, and expert on wealth, spirituality, and social justice, DWP operates through three key strategies: sector transformation, storytelling and culture, and reparative giving. DWP’s work has radically transformed the philanthropic sector and has facilitated the distribution of over $700 million for social justice efforts. Liberated Capital, DWP’s fund and donor community has granted over $23 million to support economic solidarity, wellbeing, and earth and climate efforts primarily led by Black and Indigenous communities.
27 organizations will benefit through Liberated Capital, a fund of Decolonizing Wealth Project, helping to uplift Indigenous efforts across the U.S. to combat the climate crisis.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – November 25, 2024 – Today, the Decolonizing Wealth Project and their funding mechanism, Liberated Capital, announced the distribution of $1 million in grants to 27 Indigenous-led organizations and tribes across the US through their Indigenous Earth Fund (IEF). The funding will support grantees’ efforts to tackle climate change and conservation through traditional Indigenous cultural practices and innovations. Grantees include local organizations working toward ancestral land return, land stewardship and conservation, advocacy, and youth engagement and education.
Since its inception in 2021, IEF has distributed over $4 million in capital to 38 Native-led organizations, and, as a result, has engaged over 200 tribes across the U.S. These grant-making initiatives reflect the Decolonizing Wealth Project’s mission to redirect resources to historically overlooked or marginalized communities, with a focus on supporting traditional Indigenous cultural practices as effective solutions to the climate crisis. Highlights of past grantees who have made significant strides through their climate work as a result of IEF funding include SAGE Development Authority creating the first Indigenous-owned utility-scale wind farm in the U.S; the creation of an Indigenous Storytelling Hub featuring digital shorts and a podcast series set to launch in 2025 by Indigenous Led; dam removal and flow restoration campaigns led by Save California Salmon, and more.
“Indigenous peoples safeguard much of Earth’s biodiversity, yet philanthropy has chronically underfunded their work,” said Edgar Villanueva, CEO of Decolonizing Wealth Project. “Our Indigenous Earth Fund addresses this critical gap by channeling resources to Indigenous climate and conservation leaders who have maintained vital ecological knowledge and practices across generations. This fund reinforces our steadfast commitment to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.”
“Thanks to the generous support of Decolonizing Wealth’s Indigenous Earth Fund, the Bering Sea Elders Group has continued to realize our mission of protecting our traditional ways of life, the Bering Sea, and our children’s future,”
— Jaylene Wheeler, Executive Director of the Bering Sea Elders Group.
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