The California Wellness Foundation is offering grants to support community-based organizations led by people of color that work toward taking apart this punitive system and replacing it with a system that prioritizes youth and community development.
Donor Name: The California Wellness Foundation
State: California
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 04/30/2025
Size of the Grant: Not Available
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The youth justice system over-criminalizes and incarcerates Black and Latino youth, causing them immense harm.
To succeed, these organizations must be strong, resilient and powerful. In addition, more young women and girls of color are entering the justice system. Therefore, now more than ever, they need gender-responsive strategies to transform the youth justice system.
What they Fund?
- Public policy and advocacy efforts that advance transformation of the youth justice system by either:
- Addressing the overreliance on harmful punitive systems
- Demanding accountability and strengthened oversight of the youth justice system, or
- Promoting the need to shift toward a system that prioritizes youth development.
- Youth-led community organizing and leadership development efforts that:
- Increase understanding, support, and demand for youth justice systems transformation; and
- Support skill-building, particularly for justice-involved youth, that focuses on community organizing and policy analysis.
- Communications and narrative change efforts that support consistent reporting that frames youth who have been involved in the justice system as young people who deserve compassion, fairness, redemption, dignity, and greater investment.
- Research projects that support youth-led, community-based participatory research.
- Projects that strategically align impact litigation with parallel community organizing, policy advocacy, and research efforts to advance youth justice system transformation.
Eligibility Criteria
- Your organization must be a nonprofit public agency, religious organization or tribal government. Cal Wellness does not fund individuals seeking funding.
- You must have Section 501(c)(3) status and be classified as a public charity.
- Your organization can’t discriminate by race, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation or national origin.
- Your application is not for an annual fund drive, building campaign, major equipment or biomedical research.
- Your proposal would benefit those living in California. Cal Wellness does not provide international funding or fund organizations located outside the United States.
Ineligibility
- Boys and Girls Clubs
- Domestic violence prevention
- Child abuse prevention.
- Sex trafficking prevention.
- Mentoring and after-school programs
- Youth development programs without a clear connection to systems change in the youth justice system.
- Standalone conferences.
For more information, visit CWF.
