In a sentence: Giving to organizations working on criminal justice reform has soared in recent years, and fundraisers are wondering how long that will last.
What’s going on
Criminal justice reform has long been an underfunded sector of philanthropy, but it’s experienced a substantial uptick in funding in response to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013 and the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020.
Philanthropy for criminal justice reform flows to a range of programs, including anti-recidivism services, education, advocacy and alternatives to detention and incarceration.
The Equal Justice Initiative, which provides legal services to people who have been wrongly convicted (among other programs), received the most institutional funding of any nonprofit in this sector from 2014 to 2018, as we reported in the State of American Philanthropy. Since then, funding has proliferated, with groups including the National Bail Fund, the Prison Policy Initiative and Color of Change receiving significant philanthropic support for the first time.
There is still much work to be done on an issue that profoundly affects millions—half the adults in this country have an immediate family member who is or has been incarcerated, according to a MacArthur Foundation-supported report by the Vera Institute of Justice. It remains to be seen whether the recent funding flows will continue to support the long-haul efforts needed to reform—or transform, or abolish—the system.
By the numbers
Philanthropy for criminal justice reform surged in 2020. The Movement for Black Lives raised $90 million in 2020, an enormous jump from $2.7 million in 2019. In 2020, the Bail Project raised $41 million from 468,000 donors, compared to $14.9 million from 5,100 donors the prior year.
Public spending on mass criminalization in the U.S. is huge. Total annual costs of policing are $126.4 billion, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
Key funders
Long-time funders of criminal justice reform efforts include the MacArthur, Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations. More recently, Arnold Ventures, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Open Philanthropy have become involved.
Community foundations and collaborative funds like the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation and the Communities Transforming Policing Fund are essential in this space. A dynamic relationship between private or community foundations and smaller, constituent-led organizations is a unique and evolving aspect of philanthropy for criminal justice reform.
Corporations and individual donors have not historically given big in this area, but that started changing in 2020 and ’21, with big donations from corporations including Microsoft and Nike, and individual donors including Michael Jordan and MacKenzie Scott.
New and Notable
Last year, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative launched the Justice Accelerator Fund, a $350 million, five-year commitment to criminal justice reform.
Open Philanthropy has transitioned its criminal justice reform funding into the new collaborative organization Just Impact Advisors.
Galaxy Gives, the philanthropic vehicle of former hedge funder and now cryptocurrency investor Mike Novogratz, has given $100 million in grants since 2017. About half of this has gone to criminal justice reform organizations.
The Sozosei Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, is focused on funding efforts to decriminalize mental illness.
In 2015, the Movement for Black Lives put forth the invest/divest frame that has informed some philanthropic strategy in this sector. The basic call is to divest from prisons and police and invest in communities. The California Endowment is one funder that focuses its giving within this framework in a program called Justice Reinvestment.
Food for Thought
“If you want to support folks in this moment, don’t just fund now for one year while police violence is at the top of everyone’s mind. Fund it next year and the year after that when there’s backlash from police unions and white supremacists, or when there’s a moment around implementation, that’s really critical.” — Jeree Thomas, senior program officer, the Communities Transforming Policing Fund at Borealis Philanthropy, here.
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