In a philanthropic sector increasingly crowded with intermediaries channeling donor money, often in innovative ways, the Economic Security Project has been one of those most willing to push the envelope. In its efforts to promote economic mobility for everyday Americans, ESP tends to focus on causes that get to the core of this nation’s inequality woes but receive scant attention from funders — things like pushing the once-fringe idea of a guaranteed income into the mainstream, or battling corporate monopoly.
Pursuing what it calls “ideas advocacy,” ESP often supports local-level projects and policy research to galvanize, at relatively low cost, new economic models that speak to Americans’ kitchen-table concerns. The advantage of this approach is that whether or not it leads to broader policy shifts — always a much heavier lift — it has some undeniable local impact and sparks conversation, including among other funders.
On its face, ESP’s latest support through its recently announced Public Options for America Fund might not have the same visceral appeal as putting cash in low-income Americans’ pockets or battling corporate titans. Wonky name aside, the folks at ESP see this as another manifestation of their work to shift the status quo on factors keeping Americans from getting ahead.
“It is not a new or revolutionary concept,” said Taylor Jo Isenberg, executive director of the Economic Security Project. “The argument is that postal services, libraries and public K-12 education are all examples of where we have deployed public options in the past, in a deep American tradition, to ensure economic mobility for all.”
But what exactly are the public options ESP wants to back? And how might this relatively limited and local fund make an impact on the vast problem of limited economic mobility in the United States?
“We can also build things”
In recent U.S. policy discourse, the phrase “public option” most often shows up in a healthcare context, after the concept became a source of high-voltage debate during the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. While there is a health component to ESP’s new fund, the working definition here is much broader.
ESP identifies public options as “options in the marketplace provided or procured by the government, available to all, that exist alongside private options to restore economic choice and power to families.” That could include anything from public energy utilities to public housing, public childcare services, or even public grocery stores — all of which ESP is backing in various ways through the new fund.
Calling the public options fund an “outgrowth of what we learned” via ESP’s antimonopoly work, Isenberg was excited about the idea that “we can also build things, and that in itself can provide competition and provide affordable goods and services. And that was a piece that I think has been missing from our toolbox for a while.”
The Public Options for America Fund is relatively small at this point: a half-million dollars to fund 10 grantees and a number of additional partners. ESP received over 50 proposals in response to an RFP for the fund, Isenberg said, both to advance new public options and to defend existing ones at risk of being defunded. The list of grantees includes plenty of energy-related projects, including ones intending to harness or influence the geyser of federal climate dollars coming through the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislation.
Many of the recipients are engaged in advocacy, research and technical assistance rather than the actual delivery of goods and services — at least at this point. Examples include a joint project by the Roosevelt Institute and Community Change to conduct participatory research exploring how public options can be used to address childcare needs or technical assistance from the Center for Public Enterprise to help local public projects like green banks to access federal climate funds. But many straddle both arenas, like Maine People’s Resource Center’s campaign to create a public wind power developer; or T1International, which is organizing advocates to push for the public manufacture of insulin.
Isenberg emphasized the “bread-and-butter” nature of what’s getting funded, “places where we know people are really feeling the challenges of accessibility and affordability.” Those challenges, she went on, are “contributing to why we may have a booming economy while the average American is still feeling like it’s not working for them.”
Big-name grantmakers on board
At the core of ESP’s “ideas advocacy” approach is a critique of the economic status quo that still embraces capitalism but sees overweening corporate power as an anticompetitive detriment to the responsive markets that might otherwise keep the cost of living affordable for everyday Americans. Public options, in this sense, are positioned as a help rather than a hindrance to the operation of local markets for goods and services that can keep prices in check.
In that philosophy, ESP has company among a number of other philanthropic funders that originated in the tech world (one of ESP’s founders is Facebook cofounder-turned-critic Chris Hughes) but have gone on to advance fairly progressive critiques of corporate capital. They include several of ESP’s own backers, like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Omidyar Network, the latter of which is also specifically supporting the Public Options for America Fund.
In addition to the Omidyar Network, which was also one of ESP’s early supporters, other grantmakers backing the public options fund include the Ford Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, Square One Foundation and the Marguerite Casey Foundation.
For the Marguerite Casey Foundation, support for ESP’s fund is part of a broader push to leverage public dollars, including that geyser of federal funding, toward the public good. The foundation’s appropriately named Public Dollars for Public Good portfolio includes grants to a cohort of 13 recipients working across fields like workers’ rights, tenants’ rights, and equitable local and regional economic development.
“We believe public options play a major role in helping all communities increase access to essential goods and services, including healthcare and groceries,” said Carmen Rojas, president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation. “I couldn’t be more excited to support [ESP’s] work when we are seeing a renewed interest nationally in public options for all of the things we need to live a good life. This fund represents an essential part of our effort to build a more equitable society and just economy.”
The Ford Foundation, meanwhile, has already been a staunch supporter of ESP’s antimonopoly work, dating back to when that campaign got off the ground in 2019. Since then, Ford has committed at least $3.75 million to those efforts and kicked in an additional $1 million last year to help jumpstart ESP’s public options work.
“We believe that some of the things we need to thrive that are currently controlled by the few would be better managed democratically,” said Josh Wallack, program officer for Ford’s civic engagement and government team. “For example, we have seen examples across the country of communities running their early childhood systems successfully — saving families money and helping their children thrive. We want to explore the question of what else we might take on as communities to manage together.”
“Putting it into the zeitgeist”
Considering the support ESP has lined up already — and donor outreach is ongoing — this initial foray into public options may be the proverbial toe dipped in the water. According to Isenberg, the trajectory of future funding will be “based on how much we raise and what we learn from the next six months.” But even if this just represents the start of ESP’s efforts in this arena, shifting the national status quo on the role of public options in the economy, even locally, seems like a truly herculean task.
That hasn’t stopped ESP in the past. Its other campaigns, like mainstreaming the idea of guaranteed income and battling corporate bigness, have been equally heavy lifts. While the jury remains out on whether that work has produced long-term, structural change on the level of national policy, signs point to some positive outcomes, especially via local guaranteed income pilots implemented throughout the country.
Wallack at the Ford Foundation praised the guaranteed income efforts, noting that “ESP built a network of practitioners, experts, researchers and others, and spread the ideas quickly. Just a few years later, dozens of cities and states have adopted similar programs, and the idea is on many progressive governors’ agendas.”
For Isenberg, the mere act of expanding the Overton window on public options and getting “real research, empirical and practical, on the table,” represents a win. “We’re very much in that ‘putting it into the zeitgeist’ phase of the conversation,” she said. “And at the same time, there’s real momentum to actually get some wins on the ground with some of these projects.”
The good news here is that unlike guaranteed income, public options in the local economy aren’t actually anything particularly newfangled, as ESP has emphasized. And unlike battling corporate monopoly, which relies on federal action, public options can be implemented locally — just like guaranteed income pilots. With those structural factors putting wind in its sails, ESP is also leaning into storytelling and narrative change with this initial funding, hoping the appeal of local public options can counteract prevailing cynicism toward government writ large.
“I think [this] is an opportunity for us to sidestep some of the partisan signaling that I think can sometimes make it difficult for government to step up and do something,” Isenberg said. “And people just have a very different relationship with their local governments than they do with the federal.”
