TCI | TRANSFORMATIVE COMMUNITIES INITIATIVE
The Transformative Communities Initiative (TCI) is a consensus-based grant-making collaborative hosted by Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE) and created to collectively build healthy and safe responses to community violence without reliance on law enforcement, state surveillance, or incarceration.
TCI deeply believes that young people who have been failed by the criminal punishment system are key to eliminating punitive approaches and creating spaces and systems of healing and safety.
As such, TCI’s grant-making model centers the leadership and decision-making of community mobilizers and transformative justice experts.
By investing in young emerging leaders, TCI emphasizes the importance of building relationships between funders and field activists. These relationships result in better decisions because activists and funders assess needs and make decisions about resource allocation together that can contribute to the maintenance of transformative justice solutions.
TCI Grantmaking Model
The Transformative Communities Initiative is a consensus-based grant-making collaborative that seeks to reflect the goals and principles of transformative justice in its own work, investing in those who have historically faced significant disinvestment from both the public sector and private sector philanthropy. TCI is committed to centering the leadership and decision-making of community mobilizers and transformative justice experts, including those with identities on the continuum of gender, sexual orientation, and experiences surviving correctional, sexual, and other forms of state and interpersonal violence.
P2P supports grantees’ work by offering general support grants to their organizations, accompanied by travel and training resources for grantees to connect with each other across the country. By sharing their frontline expertise, ideas, and collaborative support, grantees have the opportunity to increase their impact and expand their non-punitive solutions and responses to violence in their communities.
The P2P grants are directed by the following selection committee that includes community mobilizers, transformative justice experts, and funders:
Angel Pantoja, Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy
Gretchen Rohr, Open Society Foundations US Justice Fund
Jennifer Hoffman, Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (SEE)
Lashonia Thompson-El, The W.I.R.E.
Malachi Garza, W. Haywood Burns Institute
Manuel La Fontaine, W. Haywood Burns Institute
Mariame Kaba, Project NIA & Survived + Punished
Prentis Hemphill, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD)
Robert D. White, Consultancy/Youth Advisory Council, Annie E. Casey Foundation
Founding partners include:
W. Haywood Burns Institute
SEE
Project NIA
Open Society Foundations
Butler Family Fund
Sierra Health Foundation, and others.
The TRANSFORMATIVE COMMUNITIES strive to:
Identify emerging trailblazers from communities heavily impacted by violence
Increase leadership of grant-makers with direct experiences of criminal punishment involvement
Increase the presence and operational capacity of organizations led by system survivors
Diversify internal resource contributions from funders and advocates alike
Gain collective philanthropic decision-making expertise in reducing power disparities and strengthening relationships between funding and field activists
