Deadline: 17-Dec-21
The Circle for Justice Innovations (CJI) is seeking applications for its Strategic Opportunities Support (SOS) Rapid Response Fund to enable organizations to take advantage of unanticipated opportunities for organizing and advocacy that may be otherwise prohibitive due to small funding gaps.
The Strategic Opportunities Support Rapid Response Fund (SOS Fund) is a funding mechanism that issues micro-grants to eligible organizations addressing critically urgent strategic organizing and advocacy calls to action and meeting emergency needs in their communities.
Over the last year, they have found themselves and the community organizations they rely on pushed past the limits time and again as they struggled to meet their constituents’ needs and advance this movement for justice and healing. The terrors of the past presidential administration and the losses brought on by the pandemic have combined to take an outsized toll on their most vulnerable communities, especially among people in prison, the formerly incarcerated, and those directly impacted by the U.S. criminal legal system.
What the Fund Supports?
The Strategic Opportunities Support Rapid Response Fund supports:
- Responses to cases of extreme state violence (e.g., the killing by police or other law enforcement of a community member, ICE raids)
- Organizing against incidents of white supremacist/fascist aggression
- New legislation or government policies that aim to expand the criminalization and/or incarceration of marginalized groups, as well as those that aim to limit constitutionally protected activities
- Responses to disasters that impact an organization’s ability to carry out their criminal justice work and/or that pose a direct threat to incarcerated people
- Advocacy and organizing for appropriate and just responses to COVID-19 such as compassionate release (funding is not offered for PPE supplies)
- Inclusion and/or participation of underrepresented communities or formerly incarcerated people and directly impacted families in movement convenings
- Healing justice work
Funding Information
Amount: up to $5,000
Ineligible
They do not fund projects of the kind listed below:
- Annual fundraising drives
- Projects that are undertaken by individuals
- Capital costs, including equipment or real estate purchases or renovations
- Isolated organizations not working with others
- Healing work that is not connected to organizing or the movement
- Direct services, such as housing, provision of clothes, shelter, food, etc., or standalone legal services
For more information, visit CJI.
For more information, visit https://www.cjifund.org/apply-for-grants