The Impact Fund provides recoverable grants to nonprofit legal services, solo attorneys, and small law firms pursuing impact litigation to challenge economic, racial, environmental, and social injustices. Since its founding in 1992, the Fund has awarded over 800 grants totaling more than $10 million, with individual grants typically ranging between $10,000 and $50,000. These grants support class actions, multi-plaintiff, and environmental justice cases that aim to drive significant legal or systemic reforms.
The Fund supports litigation involving social and environmental justice. Its social justice efforts back legal challenges to systemic discrimination and abuse, such as inaccessibility of homeless shelters to disabled individuals in Chicago, forced detention of mentally ill people found unfit for trial in Texas and North Carolina, and excessive police force against protesters in Oregon. Environmental justice grants support communities suffering from pollution, unsafe water, and other environmental harms, including raw sewage flooding in Illinois, mercury contamination in Ontario, and air pollution from highway expansions in California and Wisconsin.
For economic justice, the Impact Fund aids cases defending vulnerable populations from exploitation and systemic inequality, including wage violations for caregivers in Washington, discriminatory housing policies in Florida and New York, and the criminalization of poverty in Montana. Grants cover litigation costs like expert fees, and recipients agree to repay the grant with interest only if fees are recovered. The Fund favors cases already filed or moving forward, especially those involving directly impacted communities, and does not fund attorney salaries or cases led by pro se litigants.