Promising Futures Grants: Human Justice

The Promising Futures Grants focus on advancing human justice by empowering young people through job training and educational support. The initiative aims to create a fairer civil and criminal justice system by enhancing advocacy, legal representation, and service delivery for underserved populations in New York. By funding innovative approaches and collaborative efforts, these grants seek to address critical issues such as homelessness and legal access, ensuring vulnerable communities receive the assistance they need to thrive.

Our grants build promising futures by helping young people thrive; providing job training and placement; making our educational and justice systems work for everyone; alleviating hunger and homelessness; improving family and child welfare services; and advancing the practice of social work
Focus Area: Human Justice
Program goal: to promote a more effective and fair civil and criminal justice system through research and monitoring of practices and procedures in City courts, and advocacy to improve local court practices and procedures.
Grants are made to:
Provide advocacy, information, and representation in emerging and/or urgent areas of civil law where other funding sources are limited, including:helping advocates and legal service nonprofits act quickly when laws and policies change; andsupporting advocacy and individual, multi-plaintiff, or class-action litigation to protect New Yorkers’ civil rights and make law and public policy more responsive to the needs of the City’s most vulnerable residents.Identify effective ways to help low-income New Yorkers resolve legal problems and thereby improve their quality of life by:testing the effectiveness of different service delivery methods such as brief advice, technology, non-lawyers, and alternative courts;connecting legal help with other desired outcomes such as reducing homelessness and increasing employment and educational opportunities through program evaluation and collaboration with other social service providers; andbuilding the capacity of legal-service nonprofits, individually and as a field, to track and communicate their results.

Eligibility

Most of our competitive grants go to public charities, or groups sponsored by one.
While our focus is on New York, we support some organizations headquartered outside the City.
Grantees (or fiscal agents) should have a board of directors with at least five members, and no more than one paid board member.
We fund programs that promote change in policy or systems, build capacity of organizations, and expand and/or improve direct service
Our general practice is to make grants for one year.

Ineligibility

We do not make grants to individuals, or for general operating support, capital and building campaigns, endowments, equipment, deficit financing, or religious purposes.We do not make grants to provide legal representation in criminal matters.