The Economic Justice Program works globally to promote economic systems and practices that build more equitable, sustainable, and democratic societies.
We advance economic justice through grant making and impact investment in three related areas:
- amplifying worker power
- promoting fiscal justice
- challenging corporate power
Our grants go to organizations, coalitions, and individuals. Through the Soros Economic Development Fund, we also invest in businesses and funds that propel social change.
We seek a future in which economies prioritize the well-being of people and planet and where states act as a principal and fair broker of economic redistribution and environmental sustainability. We strive for a world in which economic power is more evenly balanced, the fruits of economic gain are more equitably distributed, and ownership, control, and decision-making are more equitably shared across society.
Specifically, we support changemakers who
- advance shared business ownership that broadens worker ownership and equity, and strengthens workers’ voices—with a focus on increasing racial, gender, and class representation;
- invest in child and domestic care work enterprise models that better reward, protect, and recognize the sector’s women-led workforce;
- organize for worker power to strengthen cross-border worker unity, voice, and action;
- expand public services spending that prioritizes equitable, high-quality services that are responsive to community need;
- fight globalized grand corruption to increase sanctions and enforcement against the theft of public resources;
- reshape taxation to fight inequality so that corporations and the wealthy contribute their fair share to society;
- promote climate justice by challenging the outsized role and interference of corporate power in climate policy;
- challenge “investor state dispute settlement” mechanisms to reduce corporate interference with low-income country regulation and policy, especially in the areas of climate, taxation, and labor;
- transform corporate governance to ensure that profits are not made at the expense of people and the public good.
Featured Work
Press release
New Social Enterprise Seeks to Expand Affordable Global Access to Health Care
Philanthropic funders and investors led by the Open Society Foundations, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have set up a new “social enterprise” business to expand affordable, global access to medical technology.
A New and Better Normal
It’s Time to Rethink How We Regulate Global Trade

While conventional wisdom promotes laissez-faire trade policy, the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has shown that the dominant paradigm is in need of a serious reevaluation.
explainer
COVID-19 and Undocumented Workers

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic demands emergency action to support millions of undocumented migrant workers—and highlights the need for more humane and realistic government policies in the future.