Boosting resources for legal reform in MichiganNonprofit Journal Project Feature

Across Michigan, communities are grappling with the long-term impacts of mass incarceration. But a shift is underway in the state’s approach to justice reform.

Barriers like limited access to housing, employment, and education can make rebuilding a life feel out of reach. While many community-based programs work to address these challenges, securing sustainable funding remains a hurdle.

The Michigan Justice Fund (MJF) is changing the game.

The funders collaborative, housed at the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (CFSEM), brings together 17 local and national funders united in a mission to dismantle mass incarceration and invest in lasting, community-driven solutions.

“Some of the funders have maybe funded an organization or two, but they haven't funded a clear focus strategy on these issues,” Ashley Carter, director of MJF, says. “The fund pulls together these investors and has a clearly defined strategy that is approved and supported by the funders. The Michigan Justice Fund team is responsible for executing that strategy.”

That strategy is making a tangible impact for organizations like A Brighter Way, a Washtenaw County-based nonprofit that has received funding from MJF. The organization is led by Adam Grant, who brings deep personal experience to the work.

“My involvement with the legal system is long and storied,” Grant says. “My first involvement with the legal system was in 1982 when I was 12 years old, so between 1982 and 2022, that span of 40 years, I was either on probation, parole, or incarcerated that entire time.”

He adds, “I served 27 years straight from 1993 to 2020. I served two years in prison prior to that, and I've probably done about a year and a half in the county, so it's a pretty extensive stretch with the legal system.”

Grant is now the executive director of A Brighter Way, which supports formerly incarcerated people returning to their communities.

“A Brighter Way is peer run, so we have 144 years of incarceration working in our office,” he says. “There’s a saying that says ‘what’s understood doesn’t need to be said,’ and I think when you're working in an environment like this, or seeking services in an environment like this, you understand that even more.”

It’s this firsthand insight that both he and Carter believe makes a difference—and why collaborative, intentional funding models matter.

“I think that having a streamlined strategy is important,” Carter says. “When people are separated and doing their own types of investments, you're not necessarily working towards the same goals. Collaborative funding expands a shared strategy that ultimately leads to a different type of impact.”

Under MJF’s support, Grant says A Brighter Way has transformed.

“Under my leadership and with MJF’s help, we’ve been able to increase funding by fourfold, we've been able to increase staffing by sixfold, and we've been able to extend the services that we provide people about twelvefold,” he says. “So yeah, we've been able to do a lot.”

That growth stems not just from the grants themselves, but from MJF’s wider vision.

“Ultimately, we're a funder, and so we make grants that are aligned with the execution of that strategy,” Carter says. “But we also have a narrative focus, which is shifting the dominant narratives around mass incarceration and who incarcerated or impacted people are.”

Grant knows how deeply narratives matter.

“Sometimes you can get in your own head,” he says. “Stigmas are real, and they're not only external, some of them are internal. But MJF has been huge because of the fact that, especially in the political environment we're in right now, it's really difficult to be sure of some of your funding, and MJF has helped us to scale. They've been consistent. They've been here for us, and they still are here for us.”

The Michigan Justice Fund officially launched in 2021, after years of conversations that began in 2018, led by Melanca Clark of the Hudson-Webber Foundation. Carter shares that the origins included a series of roundtables with stakeholders, white papers, and a collective decision by funders to invest in something long overdue.

“We're technically an initiative of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan,” she explains. The fund is housed at CFSEM, which supports the administrative components of the work.

Beyond the structure, MJF’s power lies in its statewide reach and equity-driven approach, allowing its impact to go far beyond just one program or one county.

“We're focused on economic mobility, so dramatically shifting employment rates and opportunities for people coming home from prison and people who have any sort of criminal record,” Carter says. “We're focused on removing barriers to housing and employment, and then also working with the state to shift public spending.”

It’s this multi-pronged, collaborative effort that has allowed Grant to dream bigger for A Brighter Way.

The organization started with a $100,000 a year budget with an employee and a half that served 10 people a year. Today, it has a staff of eight, six of which are full time and now serves 175 people. Grant says, “[MJF has] been instrumental in our ability to scale, our ability to meet needs, and to be able to do what we're doing now, which is actually expanding geographically into other regions.”

For Carter, this kind of growth is exactly the point.

“In the past, criminal legal reform organizations in Michigan have been under-resourced, and we’re trying to address that,” she says. “We do like ecosystem support, so we do a lot of convenings where we’re bringing stakeholders together to collaborate differently on advancing our goals.”

That includes supporting infrastructure and innovation—things traditional funders often shy away from.

Grant says that projects and programs can get funded, but it's tough to get administrative and infrastructure costs funded: “They [MJR] have been willing to invest in those things in a way nobody else would.”

He says their support has even sparked new ventures, like exploring social enterprise models.

“They are the reason why we are able to look into the idea of social enterprises,” he says. “They exposed me to Homeboy Industries, which helped give me a better understanding of that, and that's going to help diversify our funding streams too, so we're not so reliant on grant funding, we're not so reliant on local governments.” (Homeboy Industries is an East Los Angeles gang intervention, rehab and re-entry program.)

For both Grant and Carter, justice reform isn’t just about reducing incarceration—it’s about imagining a different kind of future.

Believing that mass incarceration is fueled by poverty, Carter says that creating opportunity is how to actualize safer communities: “It’s not an over investment in law enforcement; it's a more intentional investment in communities and addressing issues that lead people to jail and prison.”

For Grant, it’s deeply personal.

“One, it keeps me humble,” he says of his lived experience. “It also gives me perspective, so no matter how difficult things are, at least I'm not in prison... I always say that ‘we are our first clients,’ and everybody on my staff is on my caseload.”

Both leaders know there’s still much to do, but the collaborative power of the Michigan Justice Fund is helping create a new path.

“This is an area that will forever need some kind of funding,” Grant says. “It'll be the easiest one to make cuts from a lot of times and some of the hardest ones to get started again. MJF has managed to create an ecosystem around it where a bunch of us are supporting one another, supporting each other's ideas, and funding is a part of that.”

He adds, “In this case, I genuinely believe that if people want to invest in something, invest in something that's going to change people's lives, this is the space to do it.”

This story is part of the Nonprofit Journal Project, an initiative focused on nonprofit leaders and programs across Metro Detroit. This series is made possible with the generous support of our partners, the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, Michigan Nonprofit Association and Co.act Detroit.