Grants for Criminal Justice

NOTE: In general, we expect to identify most giving opportunities via proactive searching and networking. We expect to fund very few proposals that come to us via unsolicited contact. As such, we have no formal process for accepting such proposals and may not respond to inquiries. If you would like to suggest that we consider a grant — whether for your project or someone else’s — please contact us.

Current Priorities: U.S. Policy

We believe that improving public policy could reduce poverty, increase innovation, accelerate global economic growth, and more. We’re interested in supporting people and organizations working to improve policy via research, public education, and other activities. For practical reasons, our current policy-oriented work largely focuses on the United States. We think of our work on U.S. policy as high-risk and high-reward, with generally long time horizons. It’s hard to predict where political opportunities will arise, and how long they’ll last. That’s why we seek to make durable commitments to causes, and to help build and support institutions that will be well-positioned to make a difference when opportunities do come.

Criminal Justice Reform

The United States incarcerates its residents at a higher rate than any other major country. We believe that local, state and federal governments can significantly reduce the use of incarceration and criminalization, averting substantial human and economic costs, while making communities safer. We believe that this issue presents an unusual degree of political opportunity, due to a recent confluence of progressive and conservative interest in reform and the increasing public attention to the problem.

Read the Criminal Justice Reform Strategy.

Farm Animal Welfare

Billions of animals each year are treated cruelly on factory farms. We believe that raising awareness of current practices and pushing for reform could reduce animal suffering by enormous amounts, yet we see relatively little attention on this issue from major animal welfare groups.

For more on why we chose farm animal welfare as a focus area, see our public cause report (September 2013), used in our process for selecting focus areas.

Macroeconomic Stabilization Policy

The recent Great Recession points to the large economic and humanitarian costs of business cycle downswings. We feel that monetary policymakers currently face political pressure to over-emphasize risks of inflation, relative to the suffering and lost output caused by unemployment. We seek to fund advocacy to emphasize the importance of the latter, and research and policy analysis to create better options for fiscal and monetary stabilization policy in the future. To the extent that better stabilization policy is possible, it could carry large humanitarian benefits, and the activities we’re interested in seem to receive little attention from other funders.

For more on why we chose macroeconomic stabilization policy as a focus area, see our public cause report (May 2014), used in our process for selecting focus areas.

Immigration Policy

We value all lives equally, and we believe that migration can dramatically improve the lives of migrants. We hope to allow more people to be able to move internationally, particularly from lower-income to higher-income countries. We see the potential humanitarian gains from such changes as massive. We see working to allow more future migration broadly, rather than for a specific group (such as high-skill workers), as a relatively neglected space among policy-oriented groups.

For more on why we chose immigration policy as a focus area, see our public cause report (November 2013), used in our process for selecting focus areas.

Land Use Reform

Local laws often prohibit the construction of dense new housing, leading to higher housing prices, especially in a few large high-wage metropolitan areas. More permissive policy could contribute to both affordable housing and the continued growth of centers of economic activity. Working toward more permissive policy from a public-interest perspective (as opposed to lobbying for specific developments) appears neglected considering the significant potential gains.

For more on why we chose land use reform as a focus area, see our public cause report (March 2015) used in our process for selecting focus areas.

NOTE: NCF accepts letters of inquiry year-round, and conducts three rounds of grantmaking each year. There are no deadlines for Letters of Inquiry — LOIs are accepted on a rolling basis and are reviewed by NCF staff within 60 days.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is a multigenerational family foundation, rooted in the Jewish tradition of social justice, working to create a more just, vibrant, sustainable, and democratic society. We partner with social movements, organizations and individuals who have creative and catalytic solutions to climate change and inequality.

Our Focus

Pursuing Justice. For People + Planet. The Nathan Cummings Foundation is a multigenerational family foundation, rooted in the Jewish tradition of social justice, working to create a more just, vibrant, sustainable and democratic society through our grantmaking in the United States and Israel.

We focus on finding solutions to the two most challenging problems of our time – the climate crisis and growing inequality – and aim to transform the systems and mindsets that hinder progress toward a more sustainable and equitable future for all people, particularly women and people of color.

Climate Change + Inequality

Climate Change

From the Paris climate agreement to Puerto Rico, the world has declared the climate crisis one of the greatest challenges in our history. It will take all of our ingenuity and resolve to build an inclusive clean economy that lifts people out of poverty and moves everyone, especially those on the front lines, out of the devastating path we now face. We will address the climate crisis from an equity perspective and hold accountable the entrenched interests that have left our nation’s infrastructure and communities vulnerable and have stalled the energy and economic transformation we need. We’ll invest in solutions at the local, state and national level and join forces with diverse, enlightened leaders to chart a new course for a sustainable future.

Inequality

Millions of Americans face overwhelming obstacles shaped by social hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender, income, education level or zip code, which restrict their opportunities. In order to address inequality, we will invest in work that reduces implicit bias and discrimination in our public policy, systems and markets. We are particularly concerned about the effects of criminal justice policies and practices on the economic security of hard-working families. With our partners, we seek new and effective pathways to improve quality of life for people and level the playing fields of opportunity. We challenge ideas, policies, practices and systems that perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes, criminalize people in poverty, and make it possible for a few to hold a vastly disproportionate share of the nation’s income, wealth and assets.

Our Approach

From our voice, to our grants and our investments, we are using all of our resources to achieve our mission. We are in the business of changemaking, not just grantmaking.

• Investing in Bold Leaders
• Our grantees and Fellows are courageous leaders willing to work in new ways, forge unusual and powerful alliances, and push breakthrough ideas that make the ‘impossible’ possible.
• Using All of Our Assets
• We are committed to leveraging 100% of our assets toward our mission through impact investing and active ownership strategies.
• Raising Our Voice
• How we do our philanthropy is as important as what we do with our philanthropy. We are using our voice, strengthening fields and expanding our networks to increase our impact.

The Foundation’s four focus areas together form an integrated framework to advance a healthy planet and democracy.

Racial + Economic Justice

We work to reverse generations of concentrated wealth and racialized power and patriarchy to get to the root causes of inequality and inequity. To advance racial and economic justice, we stand with groups like Color of Change, who speak out for and with those who are marginalized and criminalized. We’re building power, income and wealth for working people through our partnership with organizations like the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the Workers Defense Project.

Funding Overview

NCF supports strategies that challenge policies that criminalize low-income people and people of color, stripping families and communities of their humanity and stability. We invest in leaders, organizations and coalitions working to expand economic opportunity and racial justice by eradicating institutional practices steeped in racial hierarchy, discrimination and implicit bias. We partner with those building pathways to greater economic security, inclusion and mobility for all people by promoting business ownership, wealth and asset-building for people in socially and economically excluded communities. Advancing a truly just society requires creative problem solving along with a diverse set of approaches. Strategies that center and elevate the voices, stories and leadership of directly impacted people, along with the use of art, religious or ethical traditions, are critical to fostering positive cultural shifts toward inclusion and pluralism.

Funding Focus

Specifically, we support innovative ideas, strategies, and programs that:

• Increase Income: Improve working conditions for the most vulnerable communities — people of color, women, immigrants and persons with justice-involved backgrounds – to ensure that all work is fair, safe and equitable.
• Build Wealth: Build assets and wealth that lead families to greater economic security and mobility, advancing racial, gender, ethnic and economic justice.
• Disrupt Mass Incarceration: Support critical interventions that reimagine our criminal justice system and overturn policies that disproportionately target low-income people, women and communities of color.
• Reduce Debt: Support necessary interventions at the intersection of increasing income, building wealth and disrupting mass incarceration — recognizing that the issue of debt (who is burdened and who pays) is central to efforts working to achieve greater economic and racial justice.

Inclusive Clean Economy

We support a just transition to an inclusive clean economy where prosperity and a healthy environment go hand in hand. Partners like the Climate Justice Alliance, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Jobs to Move America and the NAACP Environment and Climate Justice Program are advocating for solutions that bring the environmental and economic benefits of addressing climate disruption and energy use to frontline communities first, not last.

Funding Overview

We support bold leaders who strive to create an inclusive clean economy, sparking an energy and economic transformation that reduces harmful carbon emissions in replicable, scalable and equitable ways. Achieving this requires nurturing a more diverse and inclusive movement that both builds power for frontline communities, and shifts narratives from ones that undermine a clean inclusive economy to ones that feature more voices and hold those in charge accountable. We support investments and multi-sector collaborations that spur sustainable development, inclusive wealth building and job creation. Philanthropic capital is critical, and we work to direct it to underfunded parts of the movement.

Funding Focus

Specifically, we will support innovative ideas, policies and programs that:

• Build Power: Engage broad and diverse constituencies, mobilize resources and strengthen the movement by supporting frontline leaders advocating for a just and inclusive clean energy economy.
• Shift Narratives: Amplify religious, cultural, business and community stories and demonstrate that resolving the climate crisis and a sustainable economy go hand in hand.
• Demonstrate Solutions and Change Market Behavior: Support models that deliver replicable and scalable climate and clean energy sector benefits concurrently with living wage jobs and inclusive wealth building opportunities.

Corporate + Political Accountability

We activate investors and businesses as allies, advocates and leaders on climate and social justice and work to decrease concentrated corporate power and limit corporate influence in our political system. We support partners like Ceres, Open MIC and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and use our standing as an investor to strengthen corporate and political accountability.

Funding Overview

NCF focuses our corporate and political accountability work on efforts to hold corporations accountable for the ways in which they impact progress on racial and economic justice and the creation of an inclusive clean economy. We use our standing as both a grantmaker and an investor to spur greater transparency, drive changes in philanthropic, corporate and government behavior, decrease concentrated corporate power and wealth, and challenge problematic narratives underpinning our economy and markets.

Funding Focus

Specifically, NCF will support organizations working to:

• Activate Investors: Address inequality and climate change by activating investors to press for increased transparency and drive changes to corporate behavior while challenging the notion that corporations’ primary duty is to their shareholders;
• Decrease Concentrated Corporate Power: Decrease concentrated corporate power through a focus on antitrust law and competition policy, challenging the dominance of the consumer welfare theory and ensuring that the role of concentrated corporate power in driving inequality is widely recognized;
• Leverage Corporations as Allies: Leverage businesses as allies and advocates for progress on important social and environmental issues; and
• Counter Corporate Influence on Government: Highlight and counter undue corporate influence on politicians and regulatory agencies and counter attempts to suppress the role of science and the truth in decision making.

Voice, Creativity + Culture

We aim to shift dominant narratives about race, class, gender and ethnicity and build radical solidarity and empathy through voice, creativity and culture. We support art, media, and cultural criticism that challenge injustice like Firelight Media and the Critical Minded Initiative. We invest in visionaries like the Poor People’s Campaign and Bend the Arc who use faith, spiritual, and cultural practices to seed social transformation and spiritually rooted movements for change.

Funding Overview

We recognize the power of storytelling and the arts to reflect and sustain traditions, languages, history, hopes, dreams and truths across generations. By raising the voices of poets and prophets, artists, spiritual leaders and culture shapers to shift the dominant narratives about race, class, gender and ethnicity, we can expand our collective capacity for radical empathy. We encourage voices and values that challenge imbalanced power dynamics and expand racial and economic justice.

Funding Focus

Through the Voice, Creativity, and Culture portfolio, NCF supports innovative ideas and portfolios that:

• Artistic Practice: Support arts organizations with a deep commitment to social justice and shift perspectives by supporting new narratives that nurture empathy, understanding and a culture of shared responsibility.
• Storytelling Strategies: Support different modes of storytelling — journalistic, critical and strategic — that contribute to social justice, hold the powerful accountable, and envision a world with respect and empathy at its core.
• Moral Action: Support religious and spiritually grounded activists and organizations who advocate for social justice and democratic values and shift perspectives by advancing new narratives of radical empathy and shared responsibility.
• Spiritual Practices: Support spiritual, cultural, artistic, and contemplative practices that nurture the creativity, resilience, empathy, and healing of activists, organizations, and leaders advancing social change.

NOTE: The Overbrook Foundation does not accept unsolicited requests for support from organizations not currently funded by the Foundation. However, we remain committed to our primary fields of interest and are eager to hear news from organizations working in those areas of human and rights and the environment presently of priority to the Foundation.

Mission

The Overbrook Foundation is a progressive family foundation that supports organizations advancing human rights and conserving the natural environment.

Values

Honoring the vision and dedication of its founders, Helen and Frank Altschul, The Overbrook Foundation:

• Honors its role as a steward of both the public trust and the Foundation's mission
• Advances programs ethically, responsibly and respectfully
• Is transparent and open
• Engages in its work in a deliberate and thoughtful way
• Takes measured risks
• Employs diverse approaches to seize opportunities and respond to challenges
• Supports social justice and environmental sustainability
• Promotes advocacy, accountability and reform of institutions and government

Focus Areas

Environment

The Environment Program provides support to environmental organizations in the United States and in Latin America. In Latin America, the Program funds initiatives that advance biodiversity conservation and sustainable community development, with a specific focus on the Mesoamerican region. The Foundation’s Environment Program also seeks out initiatives, primarily in the United States, that tackle some of today’s biggest environmental challenges, including corporate and consumer practices, climate change, and waste. The Program’s Movement Building portfolio aims to understand and support movements – rather than specific organizations or issues – to make them stronger, more resilient, and more impactful.

The Foundation’s Environment Program will consider supporting organizations working on the following issues:

Latin American Biodiversity Conservation

The Overbrook Foundation recognizes the value of protecting endangered biodiversity and the vital environmental and social benefits it provides. The Biodiversity Conservation program area supports programs in Latin America, with a specific focus on Mesoamerica, where globally important species and ecosystems face a wide range of threats. The Foundation seeks out projects that create practical solutions to these threats, particularly those that promote sustainable livelihoods and engage local communities in conservation efforts.

Corporate and Consumer Practices

The Foundation’s Corporate and Consumer Practices program area supports organizations that build towards a sustainable future, particularly by shifting corporate and consumer environmental practices. Funded projects range from direct engagement with corporations, to activism against destructive industries, to public education and media that amplifies efforts to improve consumer behavior surrounding energy and consumption. These initiatives work towards a sustainable economy that relies less on destructive, extractive practices and more on renewable, circular production and consumption models. In seeking projects making an impact in these areas, the Foundation prioritizes organizations that are grassroots-led, that hold the potential to serve as industry or community “tipping points,” and that apply a climate change analysis to their work.

Innovative Solutions 

Advances in technology, the growth of social media, and increased global awareness and investment are providing new and exciting environmental tools. The Foundation began a small program area that invests in organizations that are creating, developing, and implementing new and innovative approaches to sustainability and conservation.

Movement Building

The Movement Building program area was created in 2014 in an effort to understand and support movements – rather than specific organizations or issues – to make them stronger, more resilient, and more impactful. This area supports organizations that build networks and alliances, recognize the interdependence of their work with that of other organizations, and seek to advance the mission of the broader progressive movement, beyond individual issue areas. While formally a part of the Foundation’s Environment Program, the Movement Building portfolio ties together the Environment and Human Rights Programs, emphasizing organizations that work in the intersections of both movements.

Human Rights

The Overbrook Foundation has supported civil and human rights since its earliest years. Carrying this legacy forward, Overbrook currently provides funding to human rights organizations in the United States and Latin America.

For Overbrook, human rights organizations are those that see human rights as universal, inalienable, indivisible and interdependent. They lead with the people and communities impacted by the issues they are working on. They are values driven, have an all of us or none of us perspective in their analysis and messaging, and they work across sectors and identities, recognizing the range of their constituents’ needs and rights. Overbrook’s human rights grantmaking is currently focused on three programmatic initiatives and one initiative remains in development.

Internationally, the Foundation funds organizations that support human rights defenders at risk in Mesoamerica. As a part of this focus, Overbrook supports groups providing legal assistance, training, emergency grants, advocacy, accompaniment, networks and/or psychosocial support to human rights defenders at risk given the grave threats many activists face for engaging in their important human rights work.

Domestically, the Foundation currently awards grants in two areas. First, it supports organizations challenging the undue influence of moneyed interests in the U.S. political system. These organizations are working to make our government and policy makers more accountable to the people by reforming the role of money in our political system. The Foundation’s gender rights program currently supports organizations working across reproductive justice and LGBT rights issues. This includes a focus on funding organizations advancing the reproductive justice movement and those challenging overly broad religious exemptions being used to undermine LGBT rights, racial justice and reproductive justice.   

Finally, the Foundation is exploring a newer area of grantmaking using a human rights approach to challenge mass incarceration and criminalization, building on Overbrook’s long term support for organizations advancing a U.S. human rights movement. This initiative remains in development.

As described above, the Foundation’s Human Rights grantmaking can be divided into the following initiatives:

• Domestic Human Rights
• Gender Rights
• Human Rights Defenders
• Money in Politics

The Roddenberry Fellowship is about community. It’s about bringing extraordinary people together to learn, share, and grow in the pursuit of meaningful, long-term change.

To date, there are close to 100 Roddenberry Fellows from across the country, working on a range of critical issues from immigrant detention and voting rights to healthcare and domestic abuse. Together, their collective efforts make the U.S. a more inclusive and equitable place to live.

The 12-month program is designed to support Founders, Executive Directors, and CEOs who are approaching some of our most entrenched problems in new and impactful ways. The tailored support, trainings, and connections that are at the core of the Fellowship are designed to be responsive to the needs of each Fellow and each cohort. By creating space for amazing individuals to connect, the community can collectively support the revolutionary movements that are needed to reshape this country into one that meets the needs of all, not just the few.

Action, A Way Forward

Launched in 2016, the Roddenberry Fellowship is a U.S.-based fellowship awarded to extraordinary leaders and advocates who use new and innovative strategies to safeguard human rights and ensure an equal and just society for all.

The Roddenberry Fellowship is a 12-month program that offers Fellows $50,000 to take an existing initiative (e.g. campaign, organization) to the next level and amplify its impact OR to launch a new initiative.

A New Reality

COVID-19 has and will continue to severely exacerbate existing and long-standing social inequities in marginalized and underserved communities. Individuals and families already experiencing housing instability, unemployment, limited health care access, and food insecurity will undoubtedly feel the pain more than others. For these communities, COVID-19 will amplify and compound economic, health, and racial inequities and reveal in stark and terrible terms the consequences of the historic disparities in which we live.

This year, in addition to seeking to support efforts that will mitigate and alleviate the new realities for these communities, we are also introducing a new issue area – Health + Wellness – to identify solutions that address health inequities in underserved communities, such as access to basic care, affordable treatment, and mental health services.

Issue Areas

Up to 20 applicants working in one of five issue areas will be selected as 2022 Fellows:

Civil Rights

Fellows will work toward equity for all, including in our public schools, criminal justice system, and places of work.

Environmental Protection

Fellows will work to mitigate the human impact on our natural resources, neighborhoods, and communities.

Immigration & Refugee Rights

Fellows will work to ensure the rights of all newcomers to the US regardless of where they come from or why.

LGBTQIA & Women’s Rights

Fellows will work to secure rights and opportunities for everyone, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation.

Health & Wellness

Fellows will work to overcome the barriers that prevent underserved communities from accessing the healthcare they need and deserve.

The Impact Fund

Our mission is to provide grants, advocacy and education to support impact litigation on behalf of marginalized communities 

Grants

The Impact Fund awards recoverable grants to legal services nonprofits, private attorneys, and/or small law firms who seek to advance justice in the areas of civil and human rights, environmental justice, and/or poverty law. 

Since being founded in 1992, the Impact Fund has granted more than $8 million in recoverable grants. We award grants four times per year, most within the range of US$10,000 to US$50,000.

Funding Sectors

Social Justice

The Impact Fund provides grants and legal support to assist in human and civil rights cases. We have helped to change dozens of laws and win cases to improve the rights of thousands.

The cases we are funding allege that:

• In California, police used excessive force against #BlackLivesMatter protesters.
• In Colorado, female police officers face losing their careers because they can’t do enough push-ups and sit-ups.
• In Ohio and New York, a gun manufacturer knowingly sells to dealers that arm criminals.
• In Massachusetts, prisoners with Hepatitis C are going untreated.
• In North Dakota, Native Americans can’t vote because of a recent voter suppression law.
• In Florida, prisoners who request mental health services are abused and, when they complain, the abuse gets worse.

Environmental Justice

The Impact Fund provides grants to support local litigation for environmental justice, with a focus on marginalized comunities. These are often cases no one else will support. 

The cases we are funding are to stop:

• Proposed mining in the Superior National Forest that would contaminate groundwater, damage wetlands, and destroy the local Native American wild-rice economy.
• Unwanted development, after a community garden in New York was bulldozed in the middle of the night.
• Pollution from a lighter fluid factory in New Jersey that is causing illness to residents in a low-income neighborhood.
• Clear-cut logging that is threatening the health and livelihood of the local indigenous community in Ontario.
• Spraying pesticides at will in California.
• A new highway bridge that is the latest in a long history of environmental hazards heaped upon an African American and Latino neighborhood in Corpus Christi, severing it from the rest of the city.

Economic Justice

The Impact Fund provides financial and other forms of support to cases fighting for economic justice. From workers' rights to consumer protection for vulnerable populations, impact litigation is a powerful tool to hold corporations accountable. 

The cases we are funding allege that:

• In Texas, people with unpaid tickets are sent to “debtors’ prison.”
• In California, landlords lose their insurance when they accept Section 8 vouchers from low-income tenants.
• In Idaho, homeless people are jailed for sleeping outdoors, even when there are no shelters to take them in.

Additional Considerations

Is your case set up for success?

No one can guarantee a victory. That's why we look for a coherent strategy and a legal team with sufficient experience and resources to give the case the best chance of success.

Have you collaborated with anyone else?

Legal work can be all-encompassing. But taking the time to talk with others who have argued (or are currently arguing) similar cases can make a huge difference in the long run.

Do you need the money?

You probably wouldn't be reading this if you didn't need financial support, but just in case: We prioritize requests from applicants who need funding to keep their case moving forward.

Have the expenses already been paid?

Our grants can only be used for expenses that have not yet been paid. Raising funds for litigation costs can feel like a juggling act, we know. We’re available to talk by phone if you need help determining when to apply.

Have you estimated what your case will cost?

Litigation costs can be hard to predict, but we’ve found there is value in planning. Once you run the numbers, you might move securing co-counsel to the top of your list. (We can help.)

Have we funded your case before?

Occasionally we will fund a case more than once. In these situations, the case has lasted several years and has a new set of challenges and expenses.

Background 

The H. C. Gemmer Family Christian Foundation was created in 1956 by the philanthropy and vision of Hiram C. and Edith Gemmer, and their son, H. Robert Gemmer. The founders’ convictions and charitable interests focuses on peace, justice, sobriety, and racial harmony. They were also strong supporters of ecumenical and inter-organizations. By the generosity and estate planning of H. Robert Gemmer, the value of the Foundation’s assets grew fourfold following his death in 1992. The Foundation board meets semi-annually, normally the weekend after Memorial Day and the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Primary Areas of Funding

Peace with Justice

• Alternative to Violence, militarism and War
• Conflict Resolution
• Reconciliation and Healing
• Peace Education
• Criminal Justice

Human Rights

• Anti-Discrimination and Protection
• Immigrants’ rights
• Diversity and Intergroup Relations
• Social Justice
• Economic Justice