The Public Welfare Foundation has made $4.7 million in grants to 37 organizations. At a meeting on June 6, 2008 in Washington, D.C., the Board of Directors of the Public Welfare Foundation approved $1.6 million in grants through its Criminal and Juvenile Justice Program, $1 million in grants through its Health Reform Program, and nearly $1.6 million through its Workers' Rights Program. A $200,000 grant was made under the Special Opportunities Program to explore the relationship between race and long-term poverty in the Deep South. And a last time grant of $250,000 was made under the Reproductive and Sexual Health program, which is being phased out.
A complete list of grants approved at the June 6, 2008 Board of Directors meeting follows:
Workers' Rights
Just Harvest from Field to Fork - Oakland, CA ($50,000 - 1 year)
Project support for a new organization that works to make organics consumers aware of workers' rights.
Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance - Los Angeles, CA ($200,000 - 1 year)
Support for the CLEAN Car Wash Campaign, an innovative collaboration among unions; community-based, environmental, and human rights organizations; and legal services providers to improve wages and working conditions for more than 10,000 carwash workers in greater Los Angeles.
New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty - Albuquerque, NM ($75,000 - 1 year)
Support for Legal Protections for New Mexico's Poorest Workers Project.
Cornell University - Ithaca, NY ($25,000 - 1 year)
Support for a study designed to provide increased understanding of employer behavior in union organizing.
Los Angeles Alliance For A New Economy -Los Angeles, CA ($100,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Clean and Safe Ports campaign, advocating a plan to improve truckers' wages while reducing pollution at the nation's largest ports.
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante - Lake Worth, FL ($30,000 - 1 year)
General Support.
Make the Road by Walking - New York, NY ($75,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Workplace Justice Project.
Working Hands Legal Clinic - Chicago, IL ($175,000 - 1 year)
General Support.
Northwest Workers' Justice Project - Portland, OR ($75,000 - 1 year)
General Support.
Mid-South Interfaith Network for Economic Justice - Memphis, TN ($35,000 - 1 year)
General Support.
National Day Laborer Organizing Network - Los Angeles, CA ($500,000 - 2 years)
General Support.
National Opinion Research Center - Chicago, IL ($120,115 - 1 year)
Support to conduct a national survey on paid sick days.
Multi-State Working Families Consortium - Milwaukee, WI ($85,000 - 1 year)
Support for grassroots work on paid sick days efforts in California, Maine, Massachusetts and New York City.
D.C. Employment Justice Center - Washington, DC ($30,000 - 1 year)
Support to monitor and guide the implementation of the new paid sick days law in Washington, DC.
Reproductive and Sexual Health
Syringe Access Fund - San Francisco, CA ($250,000 - 1 year)
Project support for technical assistance and re-granting to harm reduction programs providing services and conducting policy work to increase governmental and private support for harm reduction as an HIV/AIDS prevention strategy.
Criminal and Juvenile Justice
The Sentencing Project - Washington, DC ($125,000 - 1 year)
General Support.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums - Washington, DC ($200,000 - 2 years)
General Support.
Drug Policy Alliance - New York, NY ($100,000 - 1 year)
Support to advocate reform of criminal justice drug policies in New Mexico, Alabama and New Jersey.
Campaign for Youth Justice - Washington, DC ($125,000 - 1 year)
General Support.
Wisconsin Council on Children and Families - Madison, WI ($50,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Justice for Wisconsin Youth project, a multi-strategy effort through public education and policy advocacy to reduce the number of youth tried as adults and divert non-violent juvenile offenders from prosecution.
Legal Aid Justice Center - Charlottesville, VA ($50,000 - 1 year)
Project support for JustChildren to lead a campaign to reform Virginia's juvenile transfer laws, which seeks to reduce the number of children who are tried and treated as adults.
Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance - Bridgeport, CT ($100,000 - 2 years)
Support for a state advocacy organization that works to reduce the number of youth offenders tried and sentenced in the adult criminal justice system, and to keep youth who commit non-criminal offenses like school truancy out of the juvenile justice system.
Action for Children North Carolina - Raleigh, NC ($50,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Children's Youth Opportunities Initiative to launch and implement a comprehensive campaign to end the automatic prosecution of all 16 and 17 year old youth in North Carolina as adults regardless of the severity of their alleged crimes.
Legal Action Center - New York, NY ($200,000 - 2 years)
Support for the National H.I.R.E. Network to promote employment of people with criminal records by providing leadership in public policy advocacy, maintaining an information clearinghouse, facilitating collaboration, monitoring and advising research, recruiting employer and labor support, and educating the public.
Safer Foundation - Chicago, IL ($80,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Policy and Advocacy Program, which seeks to increase community awareness of the barriers faced by people with criminal records and build a broad-based coalition to work toward eliminating or reducing these barriers.
Ohio Justice and Policy Center - Cincinnati, OH ($75,000 - 1 year)
Support to expand the Second Chance project to include a full-time policy advocacy attorney with the task of leading a network of re-entry service providers, developing legal resources to equip re-entry professionals, and driving policy change on important re-entry issues.
Union of Minority Neighborhoods - Roxbury, MA ($50,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI, a statewide coalition committed to reforming the Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information Act and removing the barriers that prevent the reintegration of people who have been processed by the state criminal justice system.
New Jersey Institute for Social Justice - Newark, NJ ($50,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Second Chance Campaign, which works to remove legal barriers to successful prisoner re-entry and in broader ways to increase opportunities for people with criminal records.
Texas Criminal Justice Coalition - Austin, TX ($166,000 - 2 years)
General Support.
Children's Defense Fund - Washington, DC ($75,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Juvenile Justice System Reform project to work with the Missouri Youth Services Institute to help define and support efforts for juvenile justice reform efforts in New York State.
Children and Family Justice Center - Chicago, IL ($150,000 - 1 year)
Planning grant to establish the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, which will partner with the public defender organizations and innocence projects around the country to obtain cases involving youthful offenders who have been convicted of crimes they did not commit and to seek reforms to criminal and juvenile law.
Health Reform
Keystone Research Center - Harrisburg, PA ($75,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center on the fiscal aspects of achieving comprehensive health care reform in Pennsylvania.
District of Columbia Primary Care Association - Washington, DC ($300,000 - 2 years)
Support for the Medical Homes approach to health care delivery in an urban setting: bringing various stakeholders together and addressing the facets of a health care delivery system, including access to and quality of care, workforce development, provider reimbursements, and infrastructure.
Kansas Health Consumer Coalition - Topeka, KS ($260,000 - 2 years)
General Support.
Tennessee Justice Center - Nashville, TN ($100,000 - 2 years)
General Support.
National Health Law Program - Washington, DC ($300,000 - 2 years)
General Support.
Special Opportunities
Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama - Montgomery, AL ($200,000 - 1 year)
Support for the Race and Poverty in the Deep South project, which involves conducting research and inquiry on the intersection between race and long-term poverty in the Deep South as a step toward creating new solutions to these problems.
