The Ford Foundation announced last week a $250 million commitment to support organizations that work to dismantle the barriers to the job market for people exiting the justice system.

This work is through the Justice and Mobility Fund, a partnership between the Ford Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies.

The fund brings “significant resources to the field in order to achieve criminal justice reforms that boost economic mobility, advance racial equity, and scale the most effective solutions.”

According to a Washington Post article, foundation dollars also will go to advocacy groups working to change policy, such as enacting laws that automatically expunge some criminal records as well as supporting and establishing programs that work directly with formerly incarcerated people to help them rejoin the labor force.

The fund will also help fund the Vera Institute of Justice’s advocacy, which recently led to Congress lifting a 30-year-old ban on incarcerated people receiving Pell grants to attend college while in prison.

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, shared in the article that one of the central goals of the fund is to bring philanthropic funds to this aspect of justice reform, helping those already affected by mass incarceration. 

“The biggest challenge is changing the attitude and policies of the private sector,” Walker said. “It’s about getting employers to see that this is a population of humans with human potential.”

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