Our newly launched Innovation Fund invites our staff working directly with the communities we serve to pitch new ideas for creative ways to meet the needs they see every day.
Bringing a new idea to life is never easy. It takes careful planning, strategic vision, and the courage to step into the unknown.
That’s how we launched the nation’s first community court in Midtown Manhattan over 30 years ago. Since then, we’ve prided ourselves on innovations that respond to local issues with care—like resident-led efforts to prevent gun violence, meaningful alternatives to bail, and programs that work to repair relationships in family court.
So when we received a generous unrestricted grant from MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving fund in 2023, we knew we had a unique opportunity to invest in bold new solutions that could only be built by our staff working with communities every day—many of whom grew up in those same communities themselves. That’s why we created the Innovation Fund, which provides seed funding of $25,000 or $225,000 to staff members with game-changing ideas.
The ideas that emerged were as diverse and insightful as our staff—from a training institute for people who’ve graduated from our alternative-to-incarceration programs to keep growing as community leaders, to an initiative to help young people in the Rockaways learn how to swim while exploring issues of environmental justice.
After staff developed their initial proposals, a committee comprising a broad cross-section of staff, a board member, and a foundation partner selected six finalists. Finalists then worked with our Finance and Development teams to hone their ideas and translate them into action plans. It was a collaborative process that brought teams across the Center together to refine each idea and flesh them out in detail.
And the winners are…
The recipient of the $25,000 grant plans to create a replicable model for using adventure-based virtual reality as an interactive, therapeutic experience for young people struggling with trauma. Their goal is to create a comprehensive certified training program to share the model with other service providers who work with young people impacted by the justice system. “It’s giving them a way out,” says Restorative Practices Coordinator Lorenzo Nash, who helped develop the proposal. “Imagine living in a space where you can’t leave the next two blocks over, right? This is your world. But now you’re in another world and you’re discovering other parts of the world through virtual reality.”
The recipient of the $225,000 grant plans to expand on our Newark team’s housing work, providing tenants in Housing Court with relief for overdue rent payments in cases where landlords haven’t maintained safe, decent housing conditions. The initiative would address power imbalances by supporting tenants directly in the legal process and eliminating systemic barriers to justice. It will also gather data to raise awareness about tenants’ housing needs and advocate for policy change around court practices nationwide.
“Since there isn’t a right to counsel for civil matters, most tenants don’t have access to representation,” says Yaniris Gomez, Deputy Project Director at Newark Community Solutions. “So this is an opportunity for us to provide a service that comes with legal representation while drawing awareness to the fact that tenants should have that representation when they go to court.”
The inaugural Innovation Fund process tapped into the insight and expertise of our staff working on the ground, who see the challenges that the communities we serve are facing firsthand and have deep experience adapting to hyper-local needs. It also gave our teams a unique professional opportunity to think about their day-to-day work on a more strategic level and learn the ins and outs of pitching a new idea.
“It was an empowering process,” says finalist Rosette Epstein, Community Engagement Coordinator at our Midtown Community Justice Center. “To know that there’s a place for creative ideas that are sometimes on the back burner—I think it’s an amazing signal for people to believe in those ideas.”
Our staff have always been at the forefront of our mission to build creative solutions alongside the communities we serve. As we congratulate this year’s recipients, we look forward to learning from the challenges and successes of the inaugural Innovation Fund to seed more exciting new ideas in the years to come.
If you’d like to learn more about the Innovation Fund or are interested in getting involved, please reach out to us at giving@innovatingjustice.org.