About
Commonwealth Foundation for Inclusive Democracy
Founded in 1988, the Commonwealth Foundation for Inclusive Democracy partners with progressive social movement organizations to advance long-term strategy and policy formation for structural change. The Foundation’s primary focus in the late 80s and 90s was promoting global peace and prosperity through alternatives to the dominant paradigms that shaped national defense policies. One of the outcomes of this period was the creation of the Project on Defense Alternatives.
Today the Foundation sponsors organizations and projects that focus on three key thematic areas:
- inclusive democracies that are truly representative and participatory
- inclusive economies that are democratic and people-oriented
- environmentally sustainable solutions that ensure a future with living wages and green jobs for all
We support efforts that are intersectional in their approaches to addressing problems of economic inequality, structural racism, the erosion of democratic norms and the exploitation of the natural world. Through sponsoring projects that focus on different yet related aspects of these three areas, the Foundation intends to stimulate the sharing of insights into social justice strategy, leadership development and cross-issue alliance-building.
Address:
Commonwealth Foundation
1442 A Walnut Street #42
Berkeley, CA 94709
Board
Richard Healey
Chair of the Board of Directors
Richard Healey is the current Chair of the Board of Directors. Richard is a lifelong movement activist and organizer and is the founder and former Executive Director of the Grassroots Policy Project. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Richard was active in the civil rights and anti-war movements. During the 1980s Richard was involved in disarmament and anti-intervention activities. He was Director of the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy and Nuclear Times magazine. He also served as Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and was a co-founder of the Study Circles Resource Center.
Jonathan Smucker
Director
Jonathan is the Director and Co-founder of Beyond the Choir and the author of Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals. Jonathan has worked for more than two decades as an organizer and strategist in grassroots social movements. In addition, Jonathan is working on his PhD the in Sociology at University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on collective action, collective identity, and politicization processes, focusing especially on social movements in the United States over the past century.
Aaron Tanaka
Secretary/Treasurer of the Board
Aaron is the Co-Founder of the Center for Economic Democracy and Senior Advisor with the Boston Impact Initiative. He started out as a community organizer and an economic development professional in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. Aaron was the first Managing Director of the Boston Impact Initiative and was the founding executive director of the Boston Workers Alliance, where he helped build a non-profit that combines grassroots policy advocacy with cooperative business development in Boston’s low-income communities of color.
Charlene Sinclair
Director
Dr. Charlene Sinclair has been a board member since 2013. For over 20 years, Charlene has been a community organizer, network-weaver, educator, mentor, thought-leader and the founder of the Center on Race, Religion and Economic Democracy. She earned a PhD from Union Theological Seminary in 2017, focusing on Black Liberation Theology.
Staff
Sandra Hinson
Managing Director
Sandra Hinson is the Managing Director of the Commonwealth Foundation. In addition to providing administrative support to the Foundation, Sandra provides strategic analysis on housing, healthcare, taxes and budget issues, labor, criminal justice policies and more to movement organizations. Sandra became involved in labor organizing in the 1980s and worked with unions on healthcare reform in the early 1990s.