The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $300,000 to The Ordinary People Society to support its Prodigal Child Project, which organizes pastors in the southern U.S. in support of prisoners, former prisoners, their families, and communities, as part of larger campaigns to raise public awareness and reduce incarceration. The work is led by Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, a formerly incarcerated person who has long worked for reforms in Alabama and surrounding states. This grant will allow Pastor Glasgow to begin building up the infrastructure of his organization.
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.