June 2, 2025
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From the DWP Team
The Moonshot Moment
Edgar Villanueva
June 2, 2025
Since 2018, Decolonizing Wealth Project has ignited a global movement grounded in a simple but revolutionary idea: money can be medicine. We didn't just introduce this concept—we fundamentally transformed how philanthropy operates in the United States and beyond.
We pushed the boundary to create a framework that has redirected the flow of money toward healing historical harms. We've mobilized nearly $1 billion in philanthropic giving, including more than $23 million through our fund, Liberated Capital.
And, our impact goes beyond dollars: we've created healing spaces where donors confront their relationship with wealth, we've elevated Indigenous wisdom as essential to economic justice, and we've built bridges between communities that philanthropy traditionally overlooked. The result? Personal and organizational transformations that prove a deeper truth: while our suffering is mutual, so is our path to collective wellbeing.
When we gathered our team to envision the next ten years of DWP, one word kept rising to the surface: possibility. We reflected on the immense wealth held in philanthropy — and the transformation possible if healing were prioritized over hoarding. So we began crafting a 10-year strategy to transform wealth into collective wellbeing, with plans to announce it in the spring of 2025.
And then things changed.
We’re now navigating waves of constitutional crises, growing authoritarianism, and threats to the very sectors we work within—including philanthropy itself. The issues we aim to address have always transcended party lines, but today’s conditions are accelerating harm at an alarming pace. Inequality is deepening, and communities are paying the price — in health outcomes, climate resilience, economic security, and basic human rights. Even philanthropy as a sector is facing attacks. Our house of justice and democracy is on fire.
Philanthropy has a decision to make - grab the firehose or let our house burn.
DWP was born into a politically charged global environment, with racial and economic justice movements gaining momentum. Our work is a wake-up call to philanthropy; it offers alternatives to traditional funding models perpetuating colonial dynamics.
Now, once again, the sector finds itself asleep behind the wheel. How do we know? Look around. We are more disconnected, more sick, more isolated, and more afraid. There have been panels, pledges, and position papers—but philanthropy still hasn’t done enough of the one thing that matters most: move the money.
We must transcend the limited beliefs and structures that continue to lock away resources and give like we never have before to fund the future we believe in: a future rooted in collective wellbeing, communities have the resources to thrive, and wealth is not hoarded, but becomes a tool for healing.
We are far from powerless – we have the community, the tools and the privilege to show up in this moment for that future.
We get to choose how this chapter in America’s story unfolds.
We choose life, liberty, and the pursuit of wellbeing.
We choose to create a future where families, cultures, and dreams thrive.
And for the next ten years, we’re laser-focused on unlocking $1 trillion in reparative giving to get us there.
Why $1 Trillion?
Because we can’t afford not to. The cost of ignoring historical harm and generational trauma far exceeds this figure.
Since 1990, racial and ethnic inequities have cost the U.S. economy $51 trillion in lost output. According to Citi, over the last 24 years, the U.S. has lost up to $21.3 trillion in terms of lost business revenue, suppressed wages, and gaps in homeownership.
Philanthropy holds approximately $1.6 trillion in foundation assets. Donor-advised funds stockpile billions more each year. We are currently undergoing the largest transfer of wealth in history. That wealth is real – and it’s sitting on the sidelines, often growing through carefully managed investment.
While philanthropy alone can’t solve structural inequality, it can lead by example—by redistributing its own money and influencing public dollars toward reparative actions.
Why DWP?
Because we’ve built the roadmap – and proven it works.
Decolonizing Wealth Project began with a truth that philanthropy frequently avoids: our sector often harms as much as it helps and healing isn’t possible without reckoning. From that truth, we built a transformative approach—grounded in lived experience, informed by Indigenous values, and designed to channel resources toward collective wellbeing.
We didn’t wait for philanthropy to change—we led by example. With our Reparative Philanthropy framework, we showed how money, when moved with intention, can become a force for healing - both for the community and for donors. We brought new language, new rituals, and new relationships into a sector that had long refused to hold up a mirror and examine its own shortcomings.
Over the past seven years, we’ve:
- Shifted the very language of philanthropy, making "reparative philanthropy" and "money as medicine" concepts that now shape boardroom agendas
- Built a vibrant donor community of 700 folks across the wealth spectrum who join not just to give, but to experience profound transformation in their relationship with wealth and giving
- Supercharged movements that were previously invisible to traditional philanthropy, bringing them from the margins to the mainstream
- Guided hundreds of leaders through healing journeys for personal and professional transformation
- Directly influenced $700 million through deep donor engagement, leveraging our reparative philanthropy framework as the transformative tool
We don’t just shift resources—we shift mindsets. We’ve helped funders face hard truths, embrace accountability, and move from performative action to meaningful responsibility.
That’s why we believe $1 trillion in reparative giving isn’t just possible—it’s already in motion.
We see the stirring: pledges made, commitments announced.
But this moment demands more than philanthropy’s familiar moves.
Pledges are where progress goes to die, and confusing strategy for action is how urgency gets lost.
It’s time to act.
So we’re asking: What future will you fund?
Will you cling to the status quo and watch the system collapse under its own weight? Or will you join us in tipping the scales toward a place where every one of us can thrive and belong?
We are Decolonizing Wealth Project.
Join us.
Edgar Villanueva
Founder/CEO Decolonizing Wealth Project
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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