If you ask Meg and Kevin, my co-founders at Proximate Press, my original idea for the magazine's name, they'll laugh.
The name we landed on was pretty solid. Proximate is catchy – it has three syllables, with an X in the middle. It's served us well. But the original name I pitched was very different and, in retrospect, pretty corny:
Team Spirit.
I've been thinking about that name a lot lately. Why it made perfect sense at the time, to go out and raise money for a new media platform with a name that fell somewhere between a Kurt Cobain reference and a pep rally?
Now, looking back – at the old Team Spirit pitch deck and at the progress we’ve made in three years – I’m realizing that maybe our work has been in the spirit of that name all along.
A crisis of individualism
Back in October 2022, I wrote up the following pitch:
- Our world is suffering from a virus of individualism. It is corrupting our systems and our institutions. And it’s happening at the worst possible time.
- Fortunately, there is an alternative ethos emerging: a cultural countercurrent to this individualism that places value on: cooperation and collaboration; human-centered design; localism and lived experience.
- This "alternative ethos” looks like: participatory grantmaking and the solidarity economy. Participatory democracy and community-led development. Shifting power over decision-making to people with lived experience.
So there you have it: the thesis of Proximate, version 1.0. Helping steward a societal shift from an ethos of individualism to an ethos of cooperation, collaboration and mutualism. To foster a collective, global sense of team spirit.
The architecture of collaboration
Looking back, it’s pretty amazing how closely our journalism has stuck to that mandate.
People often think of Proximate as a magazine about philanthropy, the economy or global development. It’s true, that’s where we focus our lens. But what we’re really interested in is the architecture of cooperation: what needs to happen, and what systems, institutions and networks need to be in place, to allow people to solve problems in the spirit of teamwork?
Over our next three years, I hope we can explore those questions even more explicitly. We’ll continue to “celebrate participatory approaches to solving urgent problems, while examining the nuances and challenges of collective decision-making.” We’ll do it across our four editorial areas:
- Philanthropy – As the era of strategic philanthropy sunsets, will the next trillion be distributed in a way that’s more cooperative, democratic, and accountable?
- Aid & Development – What comes after the collapse of the postwar aid system? And what would it mean for the next iteration to center community-led development?
- Solidarity Economies – Economic democracy has generated a lot of discussion, but remains on the margins. Where is it already becoming a practical reality?
- Frontline Finance – How are grassroots leaders stewarding resources themselves, in innovative, collaborative and cooperative ways? Without waiting for the institutions we cover elsewhere.
In the end, I'm glad we called the magazine Proximate. It's a better name. But I still think Team Spirit was pointing us in the right direction: what does it look like to foster a shift from individualism to cooperation?
Three years later, it's the question we're still working every day to answer.
