we are looking to raise $9 million* to launch the UFI and fund our first cohort.

  • we are calling you in! we have no fixed idea as to how you can support us in making this wild vision happen. we would like to meet you to explore different avenues that feel resonant to you and that are equally scary and exciting at once.

    you may want to fund your own participation, that of someone else, of several others or entire cohorts or specific aspects of the UFI. And you might have ideas for which shapes and forms this can take from in-kind donations, to opening doors to friends, to drawing our attention to funding mechanisms we haven’t thought of yet.

    any support is welcome at this stage, as we are looking to raise the initial 6 million dollars to kick off the UFI and cohort 1.

this is not a sales pitch.

  • the world of finance is deeply stuck in an endless growth model, confusing what creates and what extracts value and who to reward, which is putting at risk everything we truly value: our health, our wealth and our happiness.⁴⁷ given the dominance of the current economic paradigm, its expression in the field of social change, philanthropy or impact investment for instance, are equally held hostage by a whole series of limiting beliefs about how to use money for “good”. no surprise, philanthropy has been shown to advance colonialism⁴⁸, egotism and self-interest with severe unintended consequences for the whole field⁴⁹.

  • Paradoxically, fortunes earned by risk-prone investments in volatile markets are turned into “safe bet” funding concepts in the social change area. Power relationships are reinforced through mandate models where the owners of financial wealth define the priorities, criteria and reporting standards according to which people in the field need to operate. However, investing as little as possible into concrete projects that produce measurable impact on a short term horizon according to frameworks elaborated in board rooms far from on the ground realities stand little chance at system transformation.

    Funders often end up isolated, afraid of being reduced to the money they have. So they delegate their funding practices to family offices or foundation officials whom they trust, creating an additional administrative and human barrier between them and their grantees.

  • The UFI’s mission is to advance axiology, the philosophical study of value, to support us in redefining and taking back the power of all the ways in which we create, capture and redistribute value as a collective.⁵⁰ Once we address the deep root causes that define how we relate to money beyond shame and guilt, we can liberate the power of money to serve as a collective tool for liberation.⁵¹ Key attention must be paid to building trust and connection so we remember that we are all in this together and follow Nature’s strategy of long-term sustainability: altruism(!).