The U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in 2007 was the turning point of civic engagement, transnational activism, and philanthropic reflection in the United States. In the case of the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FNTG), the Forum was not merely a massive gathering of civil society actors but a learning, listening, and reevaluating location of how philanthropy might be responsibly involved in movements that were challenging the mainstream models of economic globalization. This article discusses the importance of the U.S. Social Forum 2007 in the context of the mission and practice of FNTG, why the event was important, how funders were involved, and what were the long-term lessons of the event to grantmaking at the nexus of trade, democracy, and social justice.
Context: why the U.S. Social Forum mattered in 2007
By 2007, the debate on globalization had taken a new dimension. The mass mobilizations against trade institutions that had occurred in the early part of the decade had now grown into more intersectional movements that connected trade policy with labor rights, environmental justice, racial equity, indigenous sovereignty, and public health. The U.S. Social Forum was envisioned as a place where these strands could meet, inspired by the process of the World Social Forum, but based on the political, economic, and social realities of the U.S.
The Forum was an opportunity of a lifetime to FNTG, whose members were actively financing research, advocacy, and organizing on trade and globalization. It assembled grassroots organizers, international movement leaders, policy analysts, and cultural workers in an environment that placed bottom-up agenda setting over elite policy negotiation. The magnitude and variety of involvement made funders reconsider the assumptions regarding the location of expertise and the way change actually occurs in complicated global systems.
FNTG’s perspective on engagement with social forums
FNTG had a definite yet wary purpose in the U.S. Social Forum. The Forum was not viewed as a place to do philanthropic branding or advance an agenda by the network. Rather, it used the gathering as a listening post and learning environment. The fundamental question that informed funder engagement was not How can philanthropy lead? but What are movements defining as priorities, and how can funders match resources without perverting those priorities?
This position was a manifestation of a shift in the idea of philanthropy that had been growing in FNTG over a few years. Trade-oriented grantmaking in the past tended to focus on technical policy interventions. By 2007, network members were becoming more aware that long-term change meant long-term investment in movement infrastructure, leadership development, and narrative framing. The Social Forum was a focused experience of movement logic at work, revealing the relations of local struggles to global economic forms.
The Forum as a site of knowledge production
The fact that the U.S. Social Forum was not only a disseminator of knowledge but also a producer of it was one of the most important ones. Assemblies, workshops and informal exchanges produced analyses that seldom found their way into academic journals or policy briefs but were nonetheless rigorous and strategically sophisticated. The participants described the impact of trade agreements on housing, food systems, migration patterns, and access to healthcare, frequently relying on lived experience instead of abstract modeling.
This was a challenge and an opportunity to funders who have been used to relying on formal research outputs. FNTG participants noted that movements were developing their own models of comprehending globalization, combining economic criticism with cultural, historical, and environmental approaches. The acknowledgment of these types of knowledge meant that funders needed to expand their definitions of knowledge and to think about funding approaches that facilitated movement-based research, popular education, and cross-sector discussion.
Philanthropy and power: lessons from Atlanta
The U.S. Social Forum also brought up unpleasant yet needed discussions of power. Several sessions directly discussed how philanthropy influenced the civil society agendas, the issue of dependency, the short-term nature of funding, and the need to adapt to the donor agenda. To the members of FNTG who were at the Forum, these criticisms were not abstract but direct commentaries on their own institutional practices.
Reading these critiques in reports did not have the same effect as reading them in situ. Funders themselves saw the impact of funding structures on organizing capacity and constraint, and the role of trust (or lack of it) in collaboration. This experience strengthened the need to have multi-year, flexible funding and to support intermediary organizations that would be able to redistribute resources in a manner that would meet movement priorities. The Forum was therefore a mirror, and reflected the influence of philanthropy back upon itself in a manner which it was hard to overlook.
Trade, globalization, and intersectionality
One of the characteristics of the U.S. Social Forum was its insistence on intersectionality. Trade policy was not addressed as a standalone issue but as a single strand in a wider web of systemic forces. The sessions associated trade liberalization with privatization of state services, undermining of labor standards, environmental destruction and criminalization of migration. These connections resonated well with the changing analysis of FNTG, which had been more and more focused on the interdependence of global economic governance.
This intersectional framing had practical implications to funders. It implied that the siloed grantmaking, which finances trade advocacy here, environmental work there, was not adequate to respond to the complexity of the effects of globalization. The Forum emphasized the importance of integrated funding approaches that may facilitate coalitions that cut across issues lines. It also emphasized the significance of cultural work, narrative, and art as elements of political strategy, which had frequently been inadequately funded in trade-oriented philanthropy.
Outcomes beyond the event itself
Although the U.S. Social Forum did not create one manifesto or policy platform, its impact was felt far beyond the programming days in Atlanta. The networks that were created or reinforced at the Forum would go on to work together in the following years, influencing campaigns on trade agreements, climate policy, and economic justice. In the case of FNTG members, the involvement served as an input to internal deliberations on portfolio balance, geographic focus, and risk tolerance.
In others, exposure to the Forum prompted foundations to explore new funding models, including pooled funds or regranting models, which are aimed at shifting resources faster and more fairly to grassroots actors. In other instances, it led to a re-evaluation of the evaluation models, in which movement-building results are usually realized over extended time frames than those reflected in conventional grant metrics. The Forum was therefore more of a catalyst and not an end, it affected paths and not outcomes.
Reflections on funder participation
A major learning experience in the U.S. Social Forum was that presence is not neutral. How funders show up matters. The experience of FNTG indicated that funders benefit most when they engage in a humble, transparent, and open-minded way that allows them to be transformed by what they experience. This involves being explicit about institutional limitations and being willing to be criticized, and not being tempted to too swiftly translate movement demands into familiar grantmaking categories.
Funder peer learning was also proven to be valuable in the Forum. Discussions between FNTG members throughout the event and after the event served to transform personal observations into shared wisdom. Through the collective processing of the experience, funders could more easily discern patterns, disrupt assumptions, and think about coordinated responses. This peer aspect increased the influence of the Forum in philanthropy, making individual exposure collective strategy.
The U.S. Social Forum in historical perspective
In retrospect, the U.S. Social Forum 2007 may be regarded as a component of a larger movement experimentation cycle in the United States. It was a time when international justice movements were trying to establish themselves more firmly at the national level, and when philanthropy was starting to wrestle with the issues of responsibility and conformity. In the case of FNTG, the Forum is one of the events that occurred in conjunction with other significant events such as ministerial protests, policy briefings, international convenings, and so on, as an experience that changed how funders perceived their role in the contentious political landscape.
The worth of re-experiencing this moment is not in nostalgia but in relevance. Most of the dynamics that existed in 2007, such as economic inequality, challenged trade regimes, environmental crisis, and the issue of democratic participation, are still at the center stage today. The intersectionality, movement leadership, and participatory spaces focus of the Forum still provides insights to funders in a new political environment who face the same challenges.
Conclusion: enduring lessons for funders and movements
The U.S. Social Forum 2007 provided the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization with more than a mere exposure to a mass convening; it was an experience of movement life, power politics, and the dynamics of systemic change. The experience of becoming learners and not the directors of the Forum also helped the FNTG members to gain a better insight into the way globalization is being practiced on the ground and how philanthropy can either strengthen or undermine the status quo.
What has been learned throughout this engagement is the fact that effective philanthropic strategy in the context of trade and globalization cannot be created in a vacuum. It should be guided by the voices, analyses and aspirations of the people who are most impacted by the policy decisions. Such events as the U.S. Social Forum provide the space in which that learning can take place, not in a refined presentation but in a long, even uncomfortable, group investigation. To funders who believe in equitable and democratic globalization, the 2007 experience has become a reference point on how to listen, learn, and act more honestly.