Moving Inclusive Economy Solutions from the Fringes to the Forefront
The inclusive economies movement has decades of proven models that solve for economic inequity, yet these innovations remain largely invisible—at the margins of media coverage, political debate, and cultural attention.
We are being outspent by those promoting narratives aimed to actually disconnect communities and workers from the wealth they generate.
We must invest to move inclusive economy solutions to the forefront of mainstream culture and open new possibilities for action.
The Beloved Economies Collaborative for Narrative Infrastructure is a multi-year, multi-organization effort to connect wider audiences with inclusive economy solutions by developing shared narrative infrastructure.
We are contributing to narrative infrastructure by working together across organizations to research, develop, and share stories and messages that shape public opinion. As we generate insights from field-wide learning and experiments in storytelling strategies, we enhance the impact of these learnings through building skills and creating coordinated networks with our movement peers and funder allies.
From there, we generate recommendations for how to build and maintain movement-accountable narrative infrastructure —not just for those advocating for economic transformation but for pro-democracy efforts at large.
Together, we are piloting a new way of working collectively to meet the complexity and scale of the challenge—and sharing our learnings from this pilot to make it replicable by others within our movement.
Join us in a bold pilot to mainstream solutions through collaboration.
Our focus: solutions related to how we work and how we fund
Our collaborative members are at the forefront of reimagining how we work and fund as levers for economic justice.
Our collaboration is focused on mainstreaming a specific set of inclusive economies solutions: workplace transformation. We take inspiration from the Beloved Economies research initiative which highlighted workplace change as a catalyst for systemic economic transformation.
In this moment of growing disillusionment with the economy across the political spectrum, we will expand public perception of what’s possible for shared power and thriving in the workplace—and how this connects to building an economy that works for all.
Our Collaborative’s approach to building narrative infrastructure centers on three elements:
01
Foundational research: Grounding in a mandate from the field
We engaged practitioners from over 70 leading organizations across the U.S. advancing economic justice and transformation, to explore what’s helping economic transformation ideas resonate more broadly, what’s holding them back, and where stronger narrative alignment may be possible. Check out the resulting report here.
02
Learning by doing: Demonstration campaigns
We are acting on the learnings from the foundational research, to boldly experiment with new storytelling, messaging, and content creation strategies that hold the potential to advance our movement’s aims and narrative power.
03
Catalyze broader action: Strategically share learnings with movement & funder allies
At every milestone in our learning and action, we organize virtual learning events open to interested movement peers and allies. We are also creating accessible information resources designed to support groups in applying the narrative insights.
Additionally, we recognize that our movement’s ability to build narrative power is tied to whether, and how effectively, such work is funded. We are working with the funding partners of this effort to surface funding-specific learnings and to engage in action together related to more effectively resourcing narrative power building, through a Funder Learning & Action Cohort.
Our People:
Joining Forces to Activate Narrative Power
With strategic partners and a dedicated implementation team, we are coming together to form a coordinated, nimble, and action-oriented Collaborative.
Together, we represent leading expertise and a significant track record in building effective narrative strategy and infrastructure for our movements, as well as in-depth experience at the cutting edge of transforming how we work and fund.
Point persons from member organizations & strategic partners
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Aidan Kohn-Murphy
Expert support for demo campaign
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Akira Nakahara
Imperative 21
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Arianne Shaffer
Kindle Project
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Bruce Campbell
Blue Dot Advocates
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Daniel Roth
JumpScale
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Dino Foxx
Justice Funders
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Jess Rimington
Beloved Economies
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Jessica Norwood
RUNWAY
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Joanna Levitt Cea
Beloved Economies
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Mandy Van Deven
Elemental
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Maya Procel Farrar
Magic Cabinet
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Nikishka Iyengar
The Guild
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Rachel Burrows
Full Spectrum Labs
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Raymond Pettit
Possibility Labs
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Sonia Sarkar
Healing Capital & Beloved Economies
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Taj James
Full Spectrum Capital Partners
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Trenton Old Horse
Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation
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Trevor D. Smith
BLIS Collective
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Vanessa Parra
Expert support for demo campaign
Funder Learning & Action Cohort
A key component of the Collaborative’s work is our Funder Learning & Action Cohort: a facilitated co-learning and action process with our funding partners to identify best practices for resourcing narrative power — including through learning by doing.
Click here to access the password-protected Resource Hub for Cohort members
Our Story:
In 2023, we came together through our shared interest in the Beloved Economies campaign’s findings.
In 2023, with support from The California Wellness Foundation, Beloved Economies convened a co-learning process with over a dozen partner organizations to explore ways its narrative research conducted during the course of co-creating the Beloved Economies book could be useful to peer efforts. Building on that inquiry, we met to jointly explore narrative opportunities for the inclusive economies movement as it relates to workplace transformation. In the process, we discovered that we shared strongly aligned aims and analysis of the narrative challenge and opportunity we jointly face.
At the end of 2023, Full Spectrum Capital Partners stepped up to incubate a new collaborative effort among our organizations and to provide bridge funding for its initial months, and asked Beloved Economies co-founders, Jess Rimington and Joanna Cea, to facilitate a collective process to dream into the possibilities and define a collaborative strategy and for Beloved Economies to co-hold the incubation with Full Spectrum Labs.
Since January 2024, fifteen of us have worked closely to develop our Collaborative through lively group Zoom sessions, many document iterations, ad hoc calls, and regular all-member communication. Together we have collectively defined a bold plan and built the apparatus to achieve it.