Summer Giving Circle: Community Works West

Last week we hosted our summer Giving Circle with a focus on organizations supporting prison system impacted populations in the Bay Area. We sourced three amazing organizations: Centerforce, Community Works West, and The Last Mile. While all of these organizations are doing amazing work and serve a critical need in our communities, we ultimately voted to make our contribution to Community Works West!

If you’re not familiar, a giving circle is a community of like-minded philanthropists who pool their funds in order to increase their collective impact. If you spend a little time reading up on giving circles, you’ll find that these initiatives democratize philanthropy. The goal of the TechEquity Giving Circle is to build a culture of philanthropy specifically among tech workers. In the past we’ve made contributions to Youth Uprising and Refugee Transitions. Read more about our selections on the TechEquity blog.

About Community Works West

Community Works envisions a future where justice heals. Through a combination of direct services and client-centered advocacy, they partner with disproportionately impacted individuals, families, and communities to prevent, disrupt, and heal the harms of our country’s failing justice systems. They work with both youth and adults impacted by incarceration and justice-system involvement in San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties and serve more than 4,000 people each year.

Community Works takes a holistic approach and is guided by the belief that the best policies will be shaped by the individuals those policies affect most. Therefore, they amplify the voices of impacted youth and adults to advocate for a more humane justice system. They’re programs include:

• Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP): a restorative justice-based violence prevention and healing program for men — they examine roots of their behavior, listen/learn from survivors, and commit to being violence-free.
• TAY (Transitional Age Youth) Reentry Case Management: gender-responsive case management services for young adults transitioning out of incarceration in San Francisco and Alameda counties.
• Project WHAT!: a leadership and advocacy program for children (ages 12–18) with incarcerated parents.
• One Family: an in-custody visitation program for incarcerated parents and their families in San Francisco County jails.
• Restorative Community Conferencing (RCC): restorative diversion program for youth (up to 17, expanding to TAY) who have high-level misdemeanors or low-level felonies; community conference to take accountability and make amends.
• Restorative Justice Arts: artistic practices infused throughout all of our programs.

Our giving circle participants are always blown away by the work our finalists are accomplishing. In our now sixth contribution, we’ve noticed a trend in our voting; we lean towards organizations that take a holistic approach, coming at the issue from multiple directions. One of the things we loved about Community Works is their ambitious mission to change our justice system while serving those most directly impacted and giving them a voice in this movement.

With the Fair Chance to Housing campaign in full swing and headed for a vote in Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville this fall, making a contribution to Community Works is a great way to show continued support for those that have been system impacted.

Get Involved

We’re leaving the contribution period open until Friday, October 4th in hopes that we can pool together more resources to support Community Works. Join us in building this culture of giving and help us reach our goal of making a $2,500 contribution. We encourage you to give the recommended amount of $150 (or 1% of your income), but please consider giving at whatever level you’re comfortable. Donate today!

While only one of our finalist organizations receives our collective contribution each quarter, we were still extremely impressed with all our finalists. We encourage everyone in our network to learn more about Centerforce and The Last Mile and the amazing work they do!

You can stay up to date on this work and make your voice heard on who will receive our next contribution by joining our Giving Circle (the next meeting will likely be sometime in November).

If you have suggestions for organizations that fit the bill, join our circle and we’ll loop you in on the process!

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