Our story

Starting in 2018, our initial team came together to set up Resource Justice. Each of us was looking for support and education around redistributing wealth that we had recently gained access to, but after exploring several UK-based grant-giving organisations and radical philanthropy networks we felt we needed something more. A few of us had been engaged with Resource Generation, a US-based organisation and felt there was a need to have a similar organisation here in the UK.

With the support of RG and their younger sister organisation, Resource Movement, in Canada, we started out on a 6-month self-education course based on RG’s “Praxis” guide.

Since then, we have run 10 Praxis courses with more than 70 people going through the program and started building a UK organisation modeled on Resource Generation and Resource Movement. We are a registered not-for-profit Cooperative. We are still making our first steps as an organisation and we aim to bring over 100 more people into our Praxis courses over the next two years, to develop ways to provide sustained support for members in achieving their redistribution goals and to forge partnerships with social movement organisations.

Our values

We envision a world where wealth, land and power are distributed equitably, where social justice movements enable collective liberation and justice for all people and our planet, where rich people pay their fair share of taxes, where the climate crisis is averted, where everyone has story they need for a fulfilling existence and there is an end to economic exploitation and endemic racial and class inequality.

In line with these values, we are committed to these principles:

  • Challenging transphobia, homophobia, ableism, racism and sexism.
  • Challenging the structural effects of racism, economic exploitation, and patriarchy in our organisational practice.
  • A learning environment – encouraging an atmosphere of mutual support and education.

How Resource Justice works

Resource Justice has a Board of Directors that make major decisions on behalf of the organisation (strategy, finances, staffing, etc), and have regular co-working meetings that work on our main pillars of work: Education, Moving Money, and Accountability Partnerships with Social Movements Transforming Philanthropy Organisational Development

Our current Steering Group members are:

Kristina Johansson is Swedish and British and grew up internationally. For over 10 years Kristina has been engaged in activism for racial, gender and climate justice. She graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont. She was an active member of Resource Generation (USA) and with the support of RG she organised her family to start redistributing their family wealth. She moved back to the UK in 2018 to set up her family’s philanthropic foundation, Solberga Foundation. Recognizing the need for an organisation like RG in the UK, she co-founded Resource Justice with other UK based young people with wealth and class privilege. She is a founding member of Patriotic Millionaires UK and lives in London with her partner and two dogs.

Willow Hill lives in London and is currently working as an administrator in public health after returning from 5 years of teaching English in Japan in 2021. In 2019, Willow inherited a large sum of money when their grandmother passed away. Looking for advice on what to do with the newfound wealth and those with similar experiences, they found Resource Generation online, and through them, Resource Justice. Willow completed the Praxis programme in 2022, facilitated a Praxis group in 2023, and since then has become more and more involved as an organiser.

Lou Macnamara works as a Camera Person and makes documentaries. After inheriting money from family members, Lou began trying to figure out ways to redistribute to organisations that challenge structural inequalities, to build stability, security and power by and for people who have not had the same access to resources and privilege. Joining various different organisations like Edge Fund led to Lou meeting the other Resource Justice co-founders and they began to use their personal situation to organise other young people with access to wealth and class privilege to give away inherited and surplus wealth.

Agnese Giardini moved to the UK in 2020 with the Erasmus program to study Social and Political Science. She joined Resource Justice in 2022 after reading about the organization in the Guardian. Since then, she has been drafting the newsletter and helping other volunteers organize workshops; she also attended Praxis in 2023. Agnese works as a freelance journalist, reporting on foreign political affairs and covering stories about the gig economy. She lives in London with her partner and their lively tuxedo cat.

Peter Backus joined RJ in 2022 after going through the praxis programme. He is an associate professor of Economics at the University of Manchester and spent much of his career researching the operations of charities in the UK. He is also a member of Patriotic Millionaires UK. He lives in Berlin with his partner.

How Resource Justice is financed:

  1. Resource Justice is self-funded by its members giving a small proportion of the money they redistribute each year into the organisation.
  2. We are open about our expenses and will publish our end of year accounts online after our first year.
  3. Most of our work is unpaid by people with access to wealth or class privilege. We also have some paid roles for people who are invited to contribute their expertise to co-creating Resource Justice.