Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors

The Breakthrough Institute was founded on the premise that the complaint-based, interest group liberalism born in the 1960s and 1970s is failing to achieve the broad social and ecological transformations America and the world need. Its founders, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, argued that if America is to realize its potential for greatness we must create a new vision and agenda relevant to the new challenges we face. Breakthrough’s tagline, “The Era of Small Thinking is Over,” represents our aspiration to break from the ever-narrowing logic of complaint-based issue organizing, which puts thinkers and advocates into thought silos.

Mission
The Breakthrough Institute is a small think tank with big ideas. Breakthrough is committed to creating a new progressive politics, one that is large, aspirational, and asset-based. We believe that any effective politics must speak to core needs and values, not issues and interests, and we thus situate ourselves at the intersection of politics, policy, philosophy, and the social sciences.

Strategy
A new politics is today being born, but its shape has not yet been determined. It could define itself as small, cautious, deficit-oriented, and isolationist. Or it could become large, bold, asset-based, and internationalist. The Breakthrough Institute engages in specific national and global campaigns to trigger new “thought movements” aimed at defining the next progressive politics. These campaigns aim to do three things:

• Achieve a new social contract for the postindustrial economy that increases financial security;
• Stimulate an equitable and accelerated transition to the clean energy economy; and
• Advance an agenda to overcome global poverty and expand equitable, sustainable prosperity.