CJI’s Leadership Circle Grant Program

CJI’s Leadership Circle Grant Program

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Circle For Justice Innovations
Last Updated: September 19, 2025

Summary

CJI’s Leadership Circle Grant Program seeks proposals from grassroots organizations led by formerly incarcerated and directly impacted individuals. The program aims to create community-based solutions that address the injustices of the U.S. criminal legal system, emphasizing alternatives to incarceration and promoting community safety. CJI prioritizes funding for organizations that empower these communities to lead change, ensuring that they are at the forefront of developing innovative solutions for justice reform.

Overview

Leadership Circle Grant Program CJI’s Leadership Circle is requesting proposals from formerly incarcerated people and directly impacted people-led grassroots organizations working to transform and reimagine the current U.S. criminal legal system, building to create new alternative community-based solutions and organizing to stop the criminalization of marginalized identities and communities. We fund alternatives outside of the current legal and cultural systems of oppression, prioritizing those that empower communities to lead their own alternatives. In supporting the crucial work of building infrastructure that replaces the current system, which is rooted in racism and inequity, CJI also prioritizes groups enhancing the safety of communities that are victims of state-sponsored violence (both overt and insidious), those affected by the criminalization of protests and those working toward community healing. We will support the crucial work of building infrastructure that replaces the current system. CJI believes that formerly incarcerated movement leaders and their organizations, working at the grassroots and drawing from experience, must be at the forefront of determining the solutions that will move us forward. The movement must also push back against the emergence of tools of repression, however disguised. The time is now for innovative approaches to building a vibrant movement that engages the imaginations of directly impacted communities creating the solutions and alternatives to disrupt, dismantle and establish new systems for justice. This year, CJI will support movement-building* organizing that is based in Creating the World –WE Demand NOW! We want to support the efforts that: build alternatives to create safe and healthy communities that don't rely on arrest and incarceration invest in approaches that seek to end mass criminalization and incarceration create policies to reform and dismantle current repressive criminal legal systems lift up the leadership and experience of those affected by the criminal legal system, regardless of the type of detention (e.g. jail, prison, ICE detention, etc) re-establish rights and access to those formerly incarcerated and newly criminalized; e.g. intersections of reproductive health & justice, protesting & resisting oppression and repression promote transformative and restorative justice that heals, builds across movements and collaborations to effectively address the current criminal legal system. CJI defines movement building as: An ongoing collaboration, both within and across communities, intended to eradicate core systems of injustice. Collaborations may include those among grassroots or community organizations and/or between grassroots/community organizations and people or groups working with transparency and integrity inside the institutions they seek to transform; eg (Community Review Boards, Arrest Divergence Programs, etc.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. CJI will ONLY fund the following:Organizations with a demonstrated commitment to including the leadership of people who have been incarcerated (defined as confinement in prison, jail, immigrant, juvenile or military detention, or deportation facility), and/or others who have been directly impacted by the system, including primary family members of incarcerated people. Organizations committed to achieving systems change through organizing, including changes in policies or institutions, such as parole, probation or other systems of control or building community based interventions and disruptions to end mass criminalization and incarceration. Organizations with budgets of $1 million or less. We are committed to supporting the smaller, emerging organizations and give consideration to those with smaller budgets. If you are under the umbrella of a larger organization, please define your relationship with that organization. Previous grantees that have provided a CJI Progress Report with information about their most-recent CJI-funded work. Organizations that meet the application deadline with all their required attachments. To accommodate the increased number of proposals due to an open application process, CJI will hold applicants strictly to the application deadline.

Ineligibility

CJI does not fund direct assistance programs.