Quixote Foundation Announces Unique Spend Down

(4-5-10) "We have never seen a confluence of specific urgencies, dynamic openings, and innovation like this moment represents. In each of our interest areas, conditions that favor progress have convinced us to spend everything over a short term.

Rules being debated right now will define whether people have access to affordable broadband and an open internet, or if those basic tools and freedoms will be restricted. Election officials are making technology-related purchasing and policy decisions that will decide whether generations of U.S. votes are secure. Pioneering investments in green energy ownership, infrastructure and jobs will affect racial and economic disparities—for better, or for worse? These and other events point to the next few years as a landmark chance to make the most of our assets.

This decision has roots in our founder's belief that a donor's role is secondary to what people and organizations do on the ground. The point is to become the most effective change agent we can be, even if that means not being a foundation anymore in the institutional sense. That's one reason we bother calling our choice "spending up" instead of spending out or down. We believe who we are as a foundation will be fulfilled—not diminished—by putting more money into action, spending it up into progressive work."