The New Economics Foundation (NEF) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

think-tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

that promotes "social, economic and

environmental justice Environmental justice is a social movement that addresses injustice that occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has gene ...

". NEF was founded in 1986 by the leaders of The Other Economic Summit (TOES) with the aim of working for a "new model of wealth creation, based on equality, diversity and economic stability". The foundation has 50 staff in London and is active at a range of different levels. Its programmes include work on well-being, its own kinds of measurement and evaluation, sustainable local regeneration, its own forms of finance and business models, sustainable public services, and the economics of climate change.

Work

NEF supported the National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning with research and reporting on "how best the Third Sector could evidence its wider impact on public services and their delivery", which underpinned the Office of the Third Sector's work programme on third sector commissioning from 2009.

Jubilee 2000 campaign

The

Jubilee 2000 Jubilee 2000 was an international coalition movement in over 40 countries that called for cancellation of third world debt by the year 2000. This movement coincided with the Great Jubilee, the celebration of the year 2000 in the Catholic Church. ...

campaign, strategised for and run by NEF, collected 24 million signatures for its worldwide petition on development and poverty.

Happy Planet Index

In July 2006, the Foundation launched the

Happy Planet Index The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an Index (economics), index of human well-being and environmental impact that was introduced by the New Economics Foundation in 2006. Each country's HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfacti ...

, intended to challenge existing indices of a state's success, such as

Gross Domestic Product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...

(GDP) and

Human Development Index The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, Education Index, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income i ...

(HDI). NEF was awarded the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies' Award for the Betterment of the Human Condition in 2007, in recognition of its work on the Happy Planet Index.

21-hour working week

In February 2010 the New Economics Foundation called for gradual transition to a working week of 21 hours.

History

Ed Mayo was chief executive from 1992 until 2003. Previous chief executives include Marc Stears who served between January 2016 and November 2017, and Miatta Fahnbulleh who held the office between November 2017 and January 2024. The current chief executive is Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah. The organisation has launched a range of new organisations to promote its ideas, including the Ethical Trading Initiative,

AccountAbility In ethics and governance, accountability is equated with answerability, culpability, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public secto ...

, Time Banking UK, London Rebuilding Society, the Community Development Finance Association, and others. The organisation's current projects include work on community-based housing, worker organising in the digital economy, restoring local banking and challenging xenophobia and racism in the Brexit debate. It is also active in community economic regeneration. The Foundation's BizFizz programme, an entrepreneurship development programme, has created more than 900 new businesses in deprived areas. The organisation has now taken this and Local Alchemy to six other countries through its international programme. The Foundation's public events attract well-known speakers. Its

clone town Clone town is a term for a town where the High Street or other major shopping areas are significantly dominated by chain stores, thus making that town indistinct from other town centres. The term was coined by the New Economics Foundation (NEF ...

campaign in favour of local economic diversity was covered two years running by every major national newspaper and TV news station and it was taken up in the Save Our Small Shops Campaign in the ''

Evening Standard The ''London Standard'', formerly the ''Evening Standard'' (1904–2024) and originally ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), is a long-established regional newspaper published weekly and distributed free newspaper, free of charge in London, Engl ...

''.

Funding

The New Economics Foundation has been rated as 'broadly transparent' in its funding by

Transparify Transparify is an initiative that provides a global rating of the financial transparency of major think tanks. It rates the extent to which think tanks publicly disclose their sources of funding, the amount of funding they have received, and the s ...

and has been given an A grade for funding transparency by

Who Funds You? Who Funds You? is a project that rates and promotes the transparency of funding sources for think tanks. The project scored think tanks according to four criteria, namely whether the organisation discloses its income, whether it publishes financi ...

Publications

''Public services and (in)equality in an age of austerity''
Joe Penny (July 2013).
''Where does money come from?''
Andrew Jackson, Richard Werner, Tony Greenham and Josh Ryan-Collins (12 December 2012)
''Growth isn't Possible: Why rich countries need a new economic direction''
Andrew Simms, Dr Victoria Johnson, Peter Chowla (25 January 2010).
''21 hours: Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st century''

Anna Coote Anna Coote is an English writer, editor, policy analyst and policy advocate who is Principal Fellow at the New Economics Foundation. She has been a lifelong political activist in support of civil rights, women’s rights, social justice and susta ...

, Andrew Simms and Jane Franklin (13 February 2010).
''The Great Transition''
Josh Ryan-Collins (18 October 2009).
''The Consumption Explosion''
Andrew Simms, Victoria Johnson, Joe Smith and Susanna Mitchell (24 September 2009).
''The Happy Planet Index: An index of human well-being and environmental impact''
Nic Marks, Saamah Abdallah, Andrew Simms and Sam Thompson (12 July 2006).
''Clone Town Britain: The survey results on the bland state of the nation''
Andrew Simms, Petra Kjell and Ruth Potts (6 June 2005).

References

External links

*
"New Economics Foundation"
''The Philanthropy Atlas''. The Institute for Philanthropy.
"New Index (Inner City 100) will Reward Inner City Innovations"

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...

.
The Happy Planet Index

One hundred months

Citizens Advice Appointment
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