Public Welfare Foundation

The Public Welfare Foundation supports efforts to ensure fundamental rights and opportunities for people in need. The Foundation looks for carefully defined points where its funds can make a significant difference and improve lives through policy and system reform that results in transformative change.

The Foundation's funding priorities include the following:

Criminal Justice
This program supports groups that are working to end the overincarceration of adults in the United States while also aiming to reduce racial disparities. In particular, grants are provided to state-based groups that are working to:

• reduce state incarceration levels and racial disparities through reforms in sentencing, charging, and supervision policies and procedures; and,
• advance the redirection and prioritization of state and local resources toward targeted investments that support system-involved individuals in their communities, through research and strategic thought leadership.

Youth Justice
This program supports groups working to advance a fair and effective community-based vision of youth justice, with a focus on ending the criminalization and incarceration of youth of color. In particular, grants are provided to groups that are working to:

• advance state policies that dramatically restrict youth incarceration, abandon the prison model, and adopt community-based approaches for youth in the juvenile justice system;
• end the practice of trying, sentencing, and incarcerating youth in the adult criminal justice system; and,
• support innovative strategies to counter structural racism in the juvenile justice system, with a particular focus on front-end reforms.

Special Initiative: Civil Legal Aid
A targeted cluster of grants is awarded through the Foundation's Special Initiative to strengthen core elements of the national legal aid infrastructure, including innovations for better and more effective service delivery. (Grants awarded through this initiative are by invitation only.)

Special Opportunities
This program supports projects reflecting the Foundation's mission and underlying values, including its longstanding commitment to racial equity and justice. 

President's Discretionary Fund
This fund offers very small grants to advance the Foundation's mission. (Grants awarded through this initiative are by invitation only.)

The Foundation provides both general support and project-specific grants.

Grants are not made to/for:

• individuals;
• scholarships;
• direct services; or,
• international projects.