The Open Philanthropy Project recommended a grant of $250,000 to the Youth First Initiative for general support. The Youth First Initiative is undertaking a coordinated national advocacy campaign with the ultimate goals of completely ending youth incarceration, closing youth prisons, and redirecting young people to community-based programs. The Youth First Initiative is a project of New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity.
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.