The Circle for Justice Innovations (CJI) Until She’s Free Funding Circle is requesting proposals from eligible grassroots organizations led by women, girls, and gender-expansive folx working to end the criminalization and incarceration of women and girls, including trans women and girls, and gender-expansive people.
Donor Name: Circle for Justice Innovations (CJI)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Territory: American Samoa, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and U.S. Virgin Islands
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 11/09/2023
Details:
The fund will support grassroots organizing that is based on the awareness of the current political environment’s hostility toward the rights of women, girls, trans and gender-expansive people; is led by women, girls, trans and gender-expansive people directly impacted by the criminal legal system; and is working to restore or expand the rights of currently and formerly incarcerated women, trans and gender-expansive people. Organizations that are not led by women, girls, including trans women and girls, or gender-expansive people, even if they have gender focused programs, will not be prioritized for funding. Considering the increased criminalization of those who exercise rights over their own bodies and those who support people who do so, CJI has dedicated an increased percentage of the docket resources to supporting organizations working to challenge and end the retraction and blatant trampling of reproductive rights. Given the spike in violence against Asian, Black, and Muslim women, activists, and LGBTQI folx, as well as the determination of homicide as the leading cause of death for pregnant people, CJI’s Until She’s Free Fund will also support organizing that explores community-based, innovative solutions to keep these communities safe.
The Until She’s Free Fund supports work in the following focus areas:
- Ending the abuse-to-prison pipeline;
- Establishing alternatives to incarceration;
- Ensuring human rights in conditions of confinement;
- Clemency campaigns for women in state and federal prisons, especially those who are elderly, infirm, and/or serving extremely long sentences;
- Family reunification, including an end to automatic termination of parental rights due to incarceration, especially for parents and children at the U.S. border; and
- Restoring rights and opportunities to women and girls taken or restricted due to a history of incarceration or detention.
Funding Priorities
The Until She’s Free Circle will continue to fund women and gender-expansive led organizations addressing state-sanctioned violence against women and girls, including trans women and trans girls, and gender-expansive people, and their criminalization and subsequent incarceration. Within that framework, the Circle is doubling down on its support to lessen the ways the system harms these communities by supporting:
- Ending the abuse-to-prison pipeline; ending patriarchal policies that inadequately protect women, girls, and gender-expansive people from abuse and violence; and those that criminalize them for self-defense.
- Organizing to demand an end to the routine separation of families, such as: Abolition of immigrant detention, family separation, and ICE deportations. Ending cash bail, sentencing reform including clemency for women and gender-expansive people.
- Organizing that supports reproductive justice, especially organizing to end the criminalization of people who exercise their reproductive rights and those who support their right to do so.
- Efforts to decriminalize drug use and provide community-based, culturally appropriate programs and treatment for women, girls, and gender-expansive people.
- Transformative changes in systems of supervision for people with convictions. Drastically reducing supervision of people released from jails or prison unless a proven reason for said supervision is evidenced, eliminating the use of electronic surveillance.
Funding Preferences
- Organizations operating in difficult political environments, e.g., in the presence of hostile political campaigns, antagonistic public figures, or repressive laws.
- Organizations that develop new leaders, especially Black and Brown people and those who are marginalized within their communities, e.g., poor, homeless, or young people; elders, queer or trans people; people with a different racial, religious, or ethnic heritage; people living with mental illness or physical disabilities.
- Leadership development that includes healing and/or personal transformation work, especially in communities that have endured generations of violence and trauma, and who may be currently enduring state violence.
- Work in underfunded communities, especially in the south, midwestern states, Indigenous communities, undocumented or immigrant communities.
- Organizations with a consensus or near consensus-inclusive decision-making process for their constituents, members, and communities.
Eligibility Criteria
- Organizations with a demonstrated commitment to the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated women and girls, trans and gender-expansive people; (incarcerated is defined as confinement in prison, jail, immigrant, juvenile or military detention, or a deportation facility).
- Organizations committed to achieving fundamental systems change through mobilizing and organizing, including changes in policies or institutions, such as parole, probation, or other systems of control.
- Organizations with annual budgets of $750,000 or less. If you are under the umbrella of a larger organization, please define your relationship with that organization.
- Organizations engaged in community organizing efforts. However, CJI may fund organizations that, as part of a larger organizing strategy and/or leadership development plan, help provide necessities to communities in desperate need, i.e., PPE to people in prison or those recently released, shelter to people recently released from detention, jail, prison or to trans community members suffering housing insecurity, etc.
- Organizations whose work is primarily focused on the United States, including U.S. territories.
Ineligibility
- Organizations that do not include the leadership of people directly impacted by the criminal legal and/or immigrant systems.
- Capital campaigns, galas or fundraising events.
- Direct assistance programs such as emergency housing, legal aid, or abortion funds. However, if direct service programs for people in critical need are attached to organizing programs demanding such services, CJI may fund those organizing efforts.
- Political campaigns of individual candidates for office, or individual pieces of legislation However, we are eager to fund organizing effort that expand the franchise to people in jail or prison, or formerly incarcerated people, or efforts that educate, mobilize or inform potential voters about issues that impact women, girls and gender expansive communities hard hit by the criminal legal system.
For more information, visit CJI.
