Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Grant

Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: The Joyce Foundation
Last Updated: November 24, 2025

Summary

The Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Grant by The Joyce Foundation aims to create safer communities in the Great Lakes region. It focuses on reducing gun violence, addressing racial disparities in the justice system, and promoting violence intervention strategies. The foundation invites innovative proposals that support these goals, emphasizing research, policy advocacy, and community engagement to effectively address the challenges of gun violence and promote racial equity.

Overview

Note: The Joyce Foundation welcomes new ideas, but primarily funds on an invite basis.The Joyce Foundation accepts grant inquiries online throughout the year. Letters of inquiry should be submitted at least six to eight weeks prior to the proposal deadline for a given grant cycle. See Deadlines here represented by full proposal deadlines above.Applicants should anticipate the application process to take approximately four to six months from the initial submission of the letter of inquiry to the receipt of funding.Grant proposals are considered at meetings of the Foundation’s Board of Directors in April, July, and December. Applicants are strongly encouraged to plan their application and proposal submission process for the April or July meetings, since most grant funds will be distributed at those times. Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Program The mission of the Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Program is building safe and just communities in the Great Lakes region. Our grant making approach encompasses three focus areas: (1) reducing gun violence in the Great Lakes region; (2) reducing the harms and racial disparities in the criminal justice system’s response to gun violence; and 3) advancing violence intervention policy and practice as a gun violence prevention strategy, and an alternative to arrest and incarceration. Reducing Gun Violence in the Great Lakes Region Gun violence remains one of the central health and safety challenges of our time, with more than 110,000 Americans injured or killed by guns every year. Gun violence in all its forms—community violence, domestic violence, mass shootings, suicide, and accidental gun deaths and injuries— undermines the ability of the next generation to thrive. The evidence is clear that reducing gun violence requires reducing the easy availability of guns. To reduce deaths and injuries from gun violence, the Foundation supports projects to: (a) strengthen gun violence prevention policies in the Great Lakes region; (b) conduct research and improve data collection to inform policy development, implementation, and advocacy; (c) educate young people about the risks of guns; (d) use the courts to advance and defend gun violence prevention policies; and (e) engage funders in supporting gun violence prevention. Reforming the Justice System Racial equity is at the core of the Foundation’s focus on justice system reform, where police violence and mass incarceration disproportionately impact young Black and Hispanic males. We take an intersectional approach which seeks to reduce racial disparities in policing and incarceration by rethinking the standard response to gun crime of aggressive policing, arrests, and incarceration of young gun possessors. Our funding supports projects that: (a) reform policing through building police-community trust and legitimacy, reducing the use of force by police officers, and increasing police accountability; (b) develop alternatives to arrest and incarceration for young people who commit non-violent gun offenses; and (c) reimagine the future of public safety. Violence Intervention Community-based gun violence disproportionately impacts young Black and Brown people and is highly concentrated within neighborhoods and social networks. Victimization increases the likelihood that an individual will be victimized again or become a perpetrator of gun violence themselves. A growing body of evidence supports community-based violence intervention strategies as a way to break this cycle and contribute to individual and neighborhood safety and reduce reliance on the criminal justice system. The GVPJR Program will support violence intervention through: (a) research to identify best practices for design, delivery and funding of violence intervention programs; (b) professional development and technical assistance for the community of public and private sector violence intervention practitioners; and (c) support for policies to secure public sector support for violence intervention. In the areas of policing, alternatives to arrest and incarceration for young people who commit non-violent gun offenses, and reimagining public safety, we are interested in funding projects including: research, including evaluations of promising models, pilot initiatives in the Great Lakes region, policy development, federal, state or local policy advocacy, law enforcement-researcher partnerships, communications and narrative change, and public and stakeholder education and engagement, including grassroots organizing and convenings.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. We fund national projects, including research and policy advocacy, that are likely to have an impact on gun violence prevention, justice reform or violence intervention policy or practice in the Great Lakes region.Our state and local work is concentrated in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The Gun Violence Prevention & Justice Reform Program also makes grants to select initiatives in Pennsylvania. Applicants for projects in Ohio should consult with a member of the program team before submitting a letter of inquiry.

Ineligibility

While we do not make grants to support law enforcement operations, we do support projects that engage law enforcement leaders in gun violence prevention, justice system reform, and violence intervention. We also support law enforcement/researcher partnerships to identify best practices.We generally do not fund direct service programs.We do not support prison reform or re-entry programs.Other than by direct invitation, the Foundation does not fund:Capital proposals Endowment campaigns Direct service programs Commercial ventures Religious activities Scholarships. Does the Foundation fund lobbying activity? No.