Just Impact Advisors

Grants: the association provides grants to a variety of organizations that are focused on reforming the criminal legal system and shrinking the number of people who are incarcerated in the united states. Historically, grants have supported community organizing, leadership development, direct advocacy, journalism, narrative change, prosecutor accountability, and policy reform. We seek to Fund innovative leaders and organizations deploying dynamic strategies to reduce incarceration and to forge solutions and alternatives to incarceration that are effective in keeping communities safe. We prioritize funding to directly impacted leaders. In fy23, grants were provided to 17 organizations for a total of $5,410,000 and 61% of that amount was awarded to organizations or projects led by black people. We provide holistic support to grantees and their peer movement leaders which can include fundraising, operational, and strategy assistance. In fy23, we convened 161 leaders from 79 nationwide organizations for a 4-day conference with workshops and trainings on organizing, strategy, fundraising, communications, interpersonal healing, and management.

Donor advising: the association spends the majority of its time focused on providing advisory assistance, grant recommendations, and thought leadership to donors who on our advice have invested heavily into transforming criminal Justice. In fy23, we recommended $11,395,000 to 35 organizations through a donor-advised-fund. In addition, we created bespoke grantmaking recommendations for other funders. In 2022, we calculate that over $30,000,000 in multi-year funding commitments were made based on our recommendations to other funders. Each month, the association composes and distributes memoranda on current affairs, recent news, best funding practices, and philanthropic opportunities in the criminal Justice reform space, reaching hundreds of donors and donor Advisors. We regularly host donor briefings discussing our strategy and providing guidance to funders who are interested in grantmaking to the criminal Justice reform field. We offer an introductory workshop to the field of criminal Justice reform for donors and donor Advisors. In fy23, we were invited to present on our work at four prestigious conferences exclusively attended by donors, donor Advisors, and philanthropy professionals.