CJI Funding Model

What We Fund

CJI is an incubator for grassroots organizations, both emerging and more established, that are engaged in strategic criminal justice movement work with marginalized communities, including people of color, youth, immigrants, gender and sexual minorities, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and their families, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, low-income communities, and others disproportionately impacted by the U.S. criminal legal and immigration systems.

CJI funds organizations that:

Are focused on community organizing, often with member-led structures
Are focused exclusively on criminal justice as well as multi-issue organizations with targeted criminal justice work intended to build the movement
Have a clear vision for how their work will bring about systemic change and strengthen the larger movement to transform the criminal justice system
Include the leadership of formerly incarcerated people, those directly impacted by state violence, or the criminal justice system in general
Are part of intersectional networks, alliances, or coalitions that are building power for transformational change

What We Fund

CJI funds organizations that:

Are focused on community organizing, often with member-led structures
Are focused exclusively on criminal justice as well as multi-issue organizations with targeted criminal justice work intended to build the movement
Have a clear vision for how their work will bring about systemic change and strengthen the larger movement to transform the criminal justice system
Include the leadership of formerly incarcerated people, those directly impacted by state violence, or the criminal justice system in general
Are part of intersectional networks, alliances, or coalitions that are building power for transformational change

Our Theory of Change

At the core of our work is CJI’s Theory of Change which emphasizes the autonomy, leadership, and healing of directly impacted people. We accomplish this through our three-tiered funding model:

CJI honors grantees’ autonomy by elevating the voices of marginalized and vulnerable communities and promoting their interests and needs. Our grantmaking process seeks to address and eliminate the root causes of trauma resulting from past experiences with arrest, detention, deportation, and incarceration by engaging directly impacted people as policy advocates and community leaders who are best equipped to inform our grantmaking focus and ultimately help guide CJI grant decisions in service of our mission.
CJI builds movement leadership by democratizing philanthropy and restoring power to directly impacted people through genuine engagement in a consensus-based grantmaking process. Formerly incarcerated people, their families, and allies help develop our RFPs, drive our grant deliberations, and participate in the selection process.
CJI routinely supports seedling organizations that are building community power and awareness from the bottom up. This philosophy is integrated with every aspect of our work. CJI goes out of its way to identify emerging leaders in the movement and fully support them through the grant application, submission, and reporting processes—right through leveraging that grant for media attention and increased donor support.

CJI’s approach promotes movement healing by providing 360-degree support to its grantees. This includes coupling CJI grants to practical resources and training opportunities. Every month, CJI’s Capacity Building Program provides free-of-charge resources to strengthen the leadership capabilities of movement nonprofits led and driven by directly impacted people. The technical assistance provided via CJI’s Capacity Building Program via workshops, webinars, convenings, and political education seminars all combine to train grantees and prospective applicants ineffective administration, fundraising, marketing, financial management, healing, self-care, and many other areas of key to institutional advancement and sustainability.

Our Theory of Change

At the core of our work is CJI’s Theory of Change which emphasizes the autonomy, leadership, and healing of directly impacted people. We accomplish this through our three-tiered funding model:

CJI honors grantees’ autonomy by elevating the voices of marginalized and vulnerable communities and promoting their interests and needs. Our grantmaking process seeks to address and eliminate the root causes of trauma resulting from past experiences with arrest, detention, deportation, and incarceration by engaging directly impacted people as policy advocates and community leaders who are best equipped to inform our grantmaking focus and ultimately help guide CJI grant decisions in service of our mission.
CJI builds movement leadership by democratizing philanthropy and restoring power to directly impacted people through genuine engagement in a consensus-based grantmaking process. Formerly incarcerated people, their families, and allies help develop our RFPs, drive our grant deliberations, and participate in the selection process.
CJI routinely supports seedling organizations that are building community power and awareness from the bottom up. This philosophy is integrated with every aspect of our work. CJI goes out of its way to identify emerging leaders in the movement and fully support them through the grant application, submission, and reporting processes—right through leveraging that grant for media attention and increased donor support.

Our Funding Model

CJI’s singular Funding Model is grounded in the core belief that—when it comes to criminal justice—transformational change begins by supporting organizations that are amplifying the leadership of directly impacted people.

Our grantmaking prioritizes project proposals that directly addresses issues affecting marginalized populations, including Black and Brown communities, women, young people, indigenous people, immigrants, LGBTQ+, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, low-income communities, and others most harmed by the U.S. criminal legal and immigration systems.

CJI provides an alternative, progressive model for giving that institutionalizes a commitment to cross-class accountability and power-sharing that appeals to the next generation of donors. CJI’s model supports the leadership of those directly impacted by incarceration and criminalization in directing movement resources while also engaging the deep support of those not directly impacted.

CJI looks for organizations with a clear vision for how their work will bring about systemic change and strengthen the larger movement to transform the criminal legal system, including through intersectional coalitions building power for transformational change. By serving as a national incubator for seedling organizations that build community power and awareness from the bottom up, CJI funding decisions are creative and transformative in how they shift resources to critical and under-resourced areas of the movement.

Our Funding Model

“CJI has been a powerful partner in BreakOUT!’s work in New Orleans, LA, and understands that ending mass incarceration in this country won’t come simply through a couple of policy wins or getting a couple of the right people in the office, but rather will take a movement – built from the ground up, with resilient leadership from communities directly impacted by injustices.”

– Wesley Ware, Co-Director of BreakOUT!, CJI Grantee