“A new collaboration by two California criminal justice reform organizations has a unique take on moving money to support incarcerated people: Instead of creating programming for them, the Inside Impact Fund lets people living in prisons decide what they’d like to do. To that end, the fund, which underwent a soft launch this year before becoming public earlier this month, is on track to move $45,000 in support of approximately 80 projects in 23 of California’s 33 prisons. For this first round, individual grants — true microgrants — ranged from $200 to $2,000.”
“Most of the activities available to incarcerated people are top-down affairs: They’re created by governmental and other agencies, and their goals are determined by the organizations that operate them. Inside Impact, on the other hand, takes a grassroots, bottom-up approach. Each of the activities Inside Impact is funding begins as the dream of someone living in a California prison.”
“Empowering people who have been stripped of agency in virtually every other area of their lives isn’t the only thing that makes Inside Impact unique: The nonprofit partners behind the fund, Impact Justice and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), have recruited a Grants Council comprising formerly incarcerated leaders and advocates to select which projects to support.”
“The idea for Inside Impact originated roughly two years ago, said Alex Busansky, president and founder of Impact Justice, which serves system-impacted individuals in areas including restorative justice and re-entry rehousing. To create the fund, ARC and Impact Justice have each committed $25,000 a year for the first three years of the Inside Impact project. In addition, Impact Justice will house the fund, providing administrative and marketing support.”
