Fliplanthropy #2: The Psychology of Wealth with Iris Brilliant Fliplanthropy

Exploring funders’ psychological underpinnings that prevent to move more accumulated wealth towards redistribution and deeply challenge donors’ place of power and privilege.

Philanthropy needs to shed the archaic models of charity-turned-philanthropcapitalism if we want to live up to systemic shifts, very much needed in the sector. If philanthropy is to level up into resource redistribution, beyond charitable giving but rather, reparations via a transformative justice lens, then we need to explore emotions and behaviours and cultural norms behind the scenes.

How can we do more funder organising for social justice? How can we really interrogate privilege, responsibility, morality & continuous participation in the millionaire class? These are some of the questions that guide this episode.

About our speaker

Iris Brilliant is a money coach from the San Francisco Bay Area whose life mission is to support people with wealth to move money to social justice movements. Iris first became passionate about moving money to support social justice when she unexpectedly inherited wealth at age 22. Already an activist involved in anti-racist and feminist organising, she felt unable to reconcile her political values with owning stocks in guns, oil and tobacco. After some soul-searching, she joined staff at Resource Generation to build community with others who could relate to her experience, and to learn how to move money to social justice.

As a National Organiser at Resource Generation, Iris specialised in working with high net wealth individuals and people with family foundations. She started her private coaching practice six years ago. Iris is trained in Internal Family Systems and teaches clients emotional tools to support their process of wealth redistribution. Iris is in the process of relocating to Berlin and will be launching a program in 2025 for wealthy descendants of Nazis to undergo courageous family research and create intersectional, reparations-oriented giving plans.