Background: Vera’s In Our Backyards Initiative
A little-known fact threatens our nation’s collective efforts to end mass incarceration: as major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New Orleans reduce incarceration, many smaller communities across the country are moving in the opposite direction. In fact, thousands of smaller cities and rural counties are now grappling with the nation’s highest rates of jail incarceration and prison admissions—and, increasingly, some of the most outsize jails. The Vera Institute’s
In Our Backyards initiative is building a truly national movement to end mass criminalization and reverse mass incarceration by
focusing on the nation's smaller cities and rural communities. To win lasting change, we are working with community advocates and elected leaders at the state, local, and federal levels.
This work is made particularly urgent by the quiet jail boom that is rapidly expanding capacity to detain and punish people across the country. Hundreds of smaller communities are building or planning bigger jails. And, as COVID-19 brought to the forefront, investment in carceral infrastructure instead of community resources has made many communities even more vulnerable during public health crises. We are focused on ending the quiet jail boom by decriminalizing poverty and public health issues, centering racial equity, and shifting power and resources so that "public safety" means the safety of everybody.
This work was born out of Vera’s
Incarceration Trends Project, which pieced together 45 years’ worth of county-level incarceration data to reveal the shifting geography of mass incarceration.
This has been further supplemented by Vera’s
qualitative research in small and rural communities across the country, which explores the human and social impact of jails and prisons and the structural and social forces driving high incarceration rates.
Funding Opportunity: In Our Backyards Community Grants
The third round of partnership grants awarded by Vera’s In Our Backyards initiative is driven by a recognition of two key dynamics:
- First, in many of the thousands of high-incarceration counties across the country, there is not enough existing appetite for meaningful reform from within local government. This may be rooted in a lack of awareness about the severity of local incarceration, a belief that the system is functioning as it should, or a misconception that growing prison admissions and crowded jails can’t be addressed by policy change.
- Second, the most ambitious efforts to reduce incarceration in America’s biggest cities have been driven and sustained by locally-rooted organizing and advocacy that creates momentum for reform and holds local government accountable for progress. Organizing and advocacy groups in small cities and rural counties benefit from opportunities to share strategies and be connected to this larger movement.
To spark and sustain reform beyond the biggest cities, Vera is awarding grants to community-based and/or statewide organizations committed to reducing incarceration and resisting jail expansion in small and rural communities. These grants are designed to support regional and local campaign efforts that use the following tiers of strategy:
1. Make data and knowledge about local incarceration more widely available, including: incarceration trends; specific policies and practices driving local incarceration; the power of locally-elected and appointed officials to reduce incarceration; the racially and ethnically disparate impact of local criminal legal systems; rising rates of women’s incarceration; how community supervision interacts with jail admissions; and other local issues contributing to incarceration.
2. Change the public narrative about incarceration in local and national media by elevating the human toll of jail, the ways incarceration harms public safety, and the particular needs and experiences of small and rural communities; and
3. Build public and governmental will to end mass incarceration locally and statewide, through policy and practice change.
Community grants must be used for these educational activities and may not be used to support lobbying of any kind, nor to support or oppose candidates for office. Issue advocacy that focuses on executive action—such as change to a city or county agency policy—is acceptable, since it is not considered lobbying under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Additionally, funds may be used to educate or brief elected officials about key issues, convene impartial candidate forums to address criminal justice, or for other forms of public and policymaker engagement. Grant money might also be used for a broad range of additional activities that support the above goals, including the creation and dissemination of materials, events, public art initiatives, direct actions, salaries of personnel who manage or direct activities meant to achieve the goals of the grant, production of audiovisual content and storytelling initiatives, trainings, and canvassing.
Applicants are eligible to apply for up to $20,000 to support work over a 10-month period (August 1, 2021-June 15, 2022).
The funding is intended to sustain existing organizing or campaigns in smaller cities or rural communities, launch new efforts, or expand work that is rooted in large cities or their suburbs to reach smaller counties. [1]
These funds are not intended solely to support direct services. However, organizations that provide direct services may apply for funding to support work aimed at securing specific policy or practice changes that lead to local or statewide jail decarceration. An example of that work might be advocating for and launching community-run pretrial services, or a campaign that engages criminalized people who receive supports or services from your organization. Similarly, local units of government may submit proposals in partnership with community-based organizations detailing how they aim to reduce incarceration in their communities by undertaking a specific campaign or effort.
[1] We define “large cities” as metropolitan areas with more than a million residents, and their suburbs as the counties in the surrounding metropolitan area.
Grantee Expectations
This grant is designed to support multiple levels of involvement:
- Public and governmental education: An In Our Backyards Community Grant will support work that includes a data-driven approach to framing the problem of incarceration as being in “all our backyards,” and identifying specific opportunities for reform. The funds can be used to sustain existing work or projects in small or rural communities, support the launch of new efforts or initiatives, expand work in a particular region, or foster partnerships and collaboration across the urban-rural spectrum. Education efforts can be geared toward elected officials, the broader public, and in limited circumstances, candidates for office. Any candidate engagement must be conducted in keeping with the requirements of Section 501(h) of the Internal Revenue Code.
- Community of practice: Grantees will also become part of a community of practice. These connections are meant to build capacity and to foster relationships among groups working toward similar goals in different regions of the country. The experience will include a limited number of meetings via phone or video and one (1) required in-person convening (when CDC guidelines deem safe in-person convenings and domestic travel), and optional subsequent convenings.[1]
[1] Travel to this convening will be reimbursed by Vera outside of the partnership grant.
Support from Vera: This grant entails a close partnership between Vera and our community grantee partners. The In Our Backyards team will provide ongoing technical assistance and be available to support campaign strategy development, advise on research design and implementation, provide policy analysis, address obstacles, identify or support media opportunities, strategize around filling data or knowledge gaps, and facilitate connections with others in the field. We can provide presentation materials, factsheets, and other resources using our repository of incarceration data, and help identify and support strategies to collect fresher or more policy-relevant data, when possible. When helpful, we can also meet directly with policymakers and system-actors to provide a national perspective in support of local reform efforts. Prospective grantees are invited to think about how they would leverage Vera’s existing incarceration data or otherwise collaborate to use local justice system data to reduce jail incarceration and criminalization.
Application Components
The application consists of the following components:
- Applicant Profile
- Proposal
- Strategy chart
- Budget Detail and Narrative
- Letter(s) of Commitment
Timeline
Conference call
Vera will hold an optional conference call for interested applicants on Monday
May 10, 2021 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm EST to share more information about Vera’s In Our Backyards Campaign, discuss the solicitation and answer questions. To RSVP and receive dial-in information email
backyards@vera.org.
Letter of Intent
Applicants are strongly encouraged to send a brief email expressing their intent to apply by
May 14, 2021 with the name of their organization, county/state, contact information, and confirmation of 501(c)3 status. If you are not a 501(c)3 organization and therefore require a fiscal sponsor, please note whether or not you have identified your sponsor. Letters of intent can be sent to
backyards@vera.org.
Application
Application materials must be submitted by May 31, 2021 (11:59 pm PST).
Who Can Apply
Eligible applicants are 501(c)(3) organizations or groups with a fiscal sponsor that have a demonstrable history of working to address mass incarceration at the state or local level. We will also consider organizations with a history of work that directly intersects with mass incarceration, including anti-poverty, housing, and other justice focused work, that propose projects meant to deepen their engagement in criminal justice.
We will consider applications that include partnerships between two to three organizations, including groups working across the urban-rural spectrum. In these instances, each organization can either serve as its own fiscal sponsor or designate one organization to serve as the fiscal agent. Each partner organization is eligible to receive a maximum grant of $20,000, regardless of whether the organizations serve as their own fiscal agent. A maximum of three (3) organizations can enter into partnership. If a group or organization working in a major urban or suburban area wishes to apply, they must identify a partner organization in a smaller city or rural community in which they wish to work. Partnership grants must be submitted as a single application.
We also encourage prospective applicants to consider how these funds might be used to shape the conversation around local elections by educating voters and candidates, or to brief recently elected officials and identify opportunities for change.
Applicants must be located in States, Districts, or Territories of the U.S.A., and must commit to:
- Achieve clear and demonstrable progress toward increasing public awareness and understanding of the role that local justice systems play in mass incarceration and catalyzing meaningful policy and practice change. Applicants should be prepared to indicate how they will measure this progress in their grant proposal.
- Participate in the community of practice, which will include one mandatory in-person convening (when CDC guidelines permit). Vera will cover the cost of travel, accommodations, and meals, but staff time for attending the convening will not be reimbursed.
- Use data in service of public education, narrative shift, and building public and governmental will for reform.
- Complete one short interim report on the work that funds are supporting.
- Complete a final report that summarizes impact, challenges, and lessons-learned.
- Grant Vera permission to publish blog posts, fact sheets, and other resources related to the partnership grants.