Grant Database

Bank of America Foreclosure Prevention Legal Assistance Grants (one-year grants)

Citi Community Economic Development Grants

Bank of America Foreclosure Prevention Legal Assistance Grants (one-year grants)

Bank of America Foreclosure Prevention Legal Assistance Grants (one-year grants)

Partner Organizations: Haitian Women of Miami, Dream Defenders, Power U Center for Social Change, Miami Workers Center, WeCount!, New Florida Majority. This project will connect siloed communities and surface innovative community-based solutions to housing and economic justice challenges by leveraging HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing process in Miami-Dade. The push for “neighborhoods of opportunity” echoes long term community demands, and provides an opportunity to both widen the focus and bring together many issue areas under the umbrella of racial justice. Our approach includes representing grassroots community organizations, addressing root causes in collaboration with them, as well as amplifying visionary, evidenced-backed solutions surfaced by those directly impacted by social and economic injustice. This presents a unique opportunity to connect and bolster community struggles and demand that local governments truly confront the comprehensiveness of racial bias – understanding that all local policies – from those related to police to schools to jobs to criminal justice to gender – are interrelated and ridden with “disparate impacts” on communities of color.

Partner Organizations: Florida Legal Services, Legal Services of North Florida, Project Directors Association Training Initiative. CLSMF, in partnership with FLS, LSNF, and the PDA, proposed to create a coordinated Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) statewide plan that will: 1) create meaningful engagement and collaboration between Florida legal services providers, healthcare practitioners, leaders, and funders and, 2) create a landscape for successful implementation of fully integrated, self-sustaining MLPs throughout the Florida legal services community.

(General Project) Partner Organizations: Legislative Committee of the Florida Project Director’s Association, Legal Aid Partner Programs

Partner Organization: Florida Rural Legal Services. FLS and FRLS propose to work with a broad array of other groups and organizations across Florida composed of, or representing, farmworkers, migrants, immigrants, low-wage workers, and related communities to: 1) examine the needs of the client communities; 2) identify unmet priorities; 3) establish formal collaborations and propose new strategies for expanding the services available; and, 4) launch a pilot project designed to be both responsive to the priority needs and sustainable beyond the term of the project’s funding. We are calling this project the Migrant Collaborative Planning project.

Partner Organizations: Legal Aid Society of Orange County Bar Association, Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida, Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida. One hundred percent of the requested funding will be allocated to IDignity’s ongoing core program of providing identification assistance. IDignity is requesting $150,000 to cover the expenses of assisting 600 Orlando clients in obtaining their crucial identification documents. Although each client’s case is unique, it takes on average just four hours of volunteer time and $250 to assist in restoring proof of an individual’s identity.

Partner Organization: Three Rivers Legal Services. JALA and TRLS propose a project offering proactive and innovative legal services to promote the lifelong earning potential of at-risk members of the community. The project will provide free legal assistance to seal or expunge arrest records for low-income adults and juveniles in the Third and Fourth Judicial Circuits of Florida. This project seeks to proactively link clients with services earlier, to encourage the acceptance of advantageous diversion options that avoid conviction and ineligibility for sealing/expunging criminal records. In furtherance of this goal, this project will also produce an innovative tool that will be shared with other organizations for efficient referral of the accused. JALA started developing electronic branch-logic software to enable social service and government agencies to determine eligibility for sealing/expunging criminal records for adults (currently in beta testing). This project proposes to build on this tool by adding a juvenile seal/expunge component, and honing its functionality to include intake and referral – qualifying this project as a Florida Innovation Grant. The tool will be integrated into FloridaLawHelp.org and eventually the Florida Legal Access Gateway. Ultimately, at its highest development, the tool could incorporate document assembly capability and facilitate self-screening and generation of pro se petitions for sealing/expunging criminal records.

Partner Organization: Legal Services of North Florida. Two-day, state-wide Summit to educate and train advocates, including legal aid attorneys, social service providers, and government agency personnel, to identify systemic issues faced by the LGBTQ community; to build the capacity of these advocates to address these issues; and to collaborate among these groups to identify issues and to develop materials, trainings and a strategy to meet and address the current needs as well as to continue to address issues as they arise in the future.

Domestic violence and immigration

Senior foreclosure advocacy

Domestic violence

Immigration, employment, anti-bullying

Domestic violence, immigration

Affordable housing, gentrification, community lawyering

Medical legal project

Domestic violence and immigration

Adult guardianship