The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $200,000 to the LEAD National Support Bureau to support its work on law enforcement assisted diversion (LEAD) programs in some US cities, which are designed to reduce low-level arrests, racial disparities, and recidivism. The LEAD National Support Bureau plans to use this grant for two activities: 1) to hire Chief Brendan Cox, a highly-regarded retiring police chief, to serve as a police ambassador for LEAD, and 2) to provide technical support to the 20-30 places that are planning to be implementing or considering implementing LEAD programs by the end of 2017.
This is a discretionary (formerly called “no-process”) grant. For discretionary grants, the grant investigator (in this case Chloe Cockburn, our Program Officer for Criminal Justice Reform) can recommend the grant without needing to go through our normal process of providing their reasoning, discussing with the team, and providing input on and review of our public page. These grants are limited to a relatively small proportion of our grantmaking, and some other stipulations apply to what types of grant are eligible. The overall aim is for us to be able to move forward on relatively small and low-risk grants, based purely on the judgment of a single staff member and with minimal delay.