This is the first step to submit for CJI's Leadership Circle 2025 RFP. You must create a Submittable account in order to complete this Eligibility Quiz. The deadline to complete the Eligibility Quiz is Monday, September 1, 2025 11:59PM EST. The deadline to complete the CJI 2025 Leadership Circle application is Friday, September 5, 2025.
After you submit the eligibility quiz, you will receive a confirmation if you are eligible or not. If you are, may proceed to the application. If you are declined, we wish you well in your endeavors.
Below is the Eligibility Criteria, if you feel your decline is in error, do not hesitate to reach out to taliba obuya at talibao@cjifund.org.
CJI has created a Grantee Partnership Resource Guide to further assist you during your submission. The Guide will cover: bit.ly/CJIGranteeGuideLC
Eligibility Criteria:
- Organizations with a demonstrated commitment to the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated, detained, and/or directly impacted people
*Incarcerated is defined as confinement in prison, jail, immigrant, juvenile or military detention, or a deportation facility
- Organizations committed to achieving fundamental systems change through mobilizing and organizing, including changes in policies or institutions, such as parole, probation, or other systems of control; and
- Organizations engaged in community organizing efforts. The primary focus of this grant process is to fund advocacy and systems change which aim to address serious injustice faced by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, girls and gender non-conforming people. However, CJI may fund organizations that, along with community organizing efforts as part of a larger organizing strategy and/or leadership development plan, help provide necessities to communities in desperate need, i.e. shelter to people recently released from detention, jail or prison; abortion funds to people in states that have criminalized those medical procedures; trans community members suffering housing insecurity; food or shelter to immigrants or asylum seekers; legal aid or expungement clinics for people with criminal charges or convictions, etc. Be sure to emphasize the advocacy that your organization is involved with.
- Organizations MUST meet the application deadline with all their required attachments. Due to the rigid schedule necessary to get funds released to grassroots communities as soon as possible, CJI will hold applicants strictly to the application deadline.
- 501c3 Letter of Notice or Fiscal Sponsor organization 501c3
- Fiscal Sponsor MOU agreement
- Complete organizational budget with revenue (with income sources) and expense https://bit.ly/2025CJIBudgetTemplate
Organizations whose work is primarily focused on the United States, including U.S. territories.
2025 Leadership Circle Request for Proposals (RFP)
Before beginning, make sure you have completed the eligibility quiz and your eligibility has been confirmed via email
Circle for Justice Innovations Overview (CJI)
Circle for Justice Innovations (CJI) is a national funder that supports grassroots movement organizations led by those most impacted by the criminal legal and immigration systems. Rooted in a commitment to racial justice, abolition, and collective liberation, CJI resources bold, community-driven efforts that dismantle systems of punishment and build community-led infrastructure rooted in care, safety, and justice. Since its founding, CJI has prioritized the leadership of formerly incarcerated and directly impacted people and invested in transformative strategies that move us closer to a world without cages.
The Political Landscape
We are living in a time of deep uncertainty and escalating crisis, with communities being displaced, surveilled, criminalized, and stripped of protections at every turn. Mass criminalization and incarceration continue to devastate Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, while entire populations are subjected to seemingly random detention and deportation under cruel and ever-expanding immigration enforcement. The systems in power—rooted in white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism—choose profit and punishment over humanity and care. From overcrowded prisons to border camps, we are witnessing how state violence isolates, punishes, and attempts to erase our people.
And yet, even in this moment, as always, our movements persist. Our people resist! We continue to create bold new strategies for survival and liberation. This is not a time for incrementalism or retreat; it is a time to resource and uplift the radical imaginations of our communities. The People must be connected, equipped, and supported to organize, fight back, and build the systems needed to live and thrive. At Circle for Justice Innovations, we believe the path forward is clear: Resist. Reimagine. Build.
In response to this political moment, CJI’s funding focuses on resourcing efforts that protect our communities, resist oppressive systems, and reimagine what safety and liberation look like. We remain steadfast in our commitment to fund formerly incarcerated people’s leadership. We support community-rooted strategies that address incarceration, detention, and deportation; amplify direct action and mutual aid; and build the infrastructure that movements need to thrive. From inside-outside ‘the wall’ organizing to legal resistance and visionary abolitionist work, our funding is meant to meet the urgency and possibility of this time under the leadership of those directly impacted.
CJI believes that true change comes from the courage, creativity, resilience, and leadership of the people most impacted by systems of criminalization and incarceration. We are committed to supporting visionary leaders and organizations who are boldly transforming our communities, dismantling oppressive structures, and building new models of safety, care, and freedom. Together, we can move beyond survival toward liberation.
We invite applicants whose work embodies these values to submit proposals that are led by formerly incarcerated, detained and directly impacted people, demonstrate strategic impact, and innovative approaches.
Resist. Reimagine. Build.
Liberation work requires a bold, clear framework. CJI’s funding focus supports three interconnected pillars—Resist, Reimagine, Build—that capture the urgent and visionary work needed to end mass incarceration, deportation, criminalization, and systemic state violence while constructing new, just futures. This moment is calling for a particular response, one grounded and led by those directly impacted. In CJI’s tradition, we maintain our commitment to formerly incarcerated people's leadership and all the efforts related to bringing our people home and restoring humanity and dignity.
**Below are examples of innovative work that we are seeking. This is not an exhaustive list.
Funding Focuses:
Resist: Fighting Systems of Harm
We support grassroots efforts that confront and dismantle systems of incarceration, deportation, criminalization, and state violence—while protecting and defending our communities.
- Community-led safety strategies rooted in local needs
- Know Your Rights education addressing police, ICE, and other state actors
- Direct action and organizing inside/outside prisons and detention centers
- Addressing Family Policing and Criminalization of Poverty
- Mutual aid networks that sustain resilience and has an organizing strategy that promotes material conditions and policy change
- Legal defense of/by sex workers, trans people, and formerly incarcerated individuals
- Jails, Prison and Detention Camp conditions of confinement
Reimagine: Envisioning Community-Led Resources
We invest in visionary, abolitionist, and transformative justice strategies that build community-led solutions to punitive systems, centering healing, accountability, and community care.
- Restorative justice and harm reduction practices
- Cultural work and narrative transformation to shift public understanding of safety
- Community-based models that reframe safety and replace policing and prisons
- Creative and Indigenous approaches to imagining safety and freedom beyond cages
- Youth-led and Youth-focused organizing and school-to-prison pipeline efforts
Build: Strengthening Movement Infrastructure, Power-building and Healing
We fund the essential infrastructure and leadership development that sustains and grows resilient movements for collective liberation.
- Coalition building and strategic gathering spaces for organizing and solidarity
- Leadership development of formerly incarcerated and detained people
- Operational support and capacity building for frontline organizations
- Restoration of Rights (Ban the Box, Voting, employment and housing, etc.)
- Media tools and technology to connect the community inside/outside the walls
CURRENT ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
CJI will ONLY fund:
- Organizations with a demonstrated commitment to the leadership of people who have been incarcerated (defined as confinement in prison, jail, immigrant, juvenile or military detention, or deportation facilities), and others directly impacted by the system, including family members of incarcerated/detained people.
- Organizations committed to achieving systems change through organizing, including changes in policies involving parole, probation or other systems of control, building community based interventions to end mass criminalization and incarceration.
- Organizations with budgets of $1 million dollars or less. We are committed to supporting smaller, emerging organizations with smaller budgets. If you are fiscally sponsored by a larger organization, please define your relationship with that organization.
- Organizations that meet the application deadline with all their required attachments. To accommodate the increased number of proposals due to an open application process, CJI will hold applicants strictly to the application deadline.
NOTE: CJI does not fund direct assistance programs. However, CJI may fund organizations that, as part of a larger organizing strategy, help provide basic necessities to communities in desperate need, e.g. diapers to single parents in poverty, shelter to trans community members who suffer housing insecurity, food to communities living in poverty, as long as these organizations also have a strong policy change component.
RFP TIMELINE – 2025
- August 4th | 2025 RFP Launch
- August 21st | 2025 RFP Webinar https://bit.ly/CJI2025LCRFP
- September 5th | 2025 RFP closes
- November 2025 | Grant Disbursements