· Public charity
Equal Justice Works
EQUAL JUSTICE WORKS creates opportunities for lawyers to transform their passion for equal justice into a lifelong commitment to public service.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k21 grants · $147k
- $10k–50k25 grants · $752k
- $50k–250k127 grants · $9.6M
- $250k+2 grants · $549k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEIGHBORHOOD LEGAL SERVICES OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY | $278,288 |
| LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER | $271,100 |
| ALASKA LEGAL SERVICES | $221,100 |
| SOUTH CAROLINA LEGAL SERVICES INC | $181,026 |
| TEXAS CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT | $172,917 |
| TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INC | $171,100 |
| NEW YORK LEGAL ASSISTANCE GROUP | $164,300 |
| KENTUCKY LEGAL AID | $159,000 |
| GIRLS FOR GENDER EQUITY | $157,000 |
| SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA LEGAL SERVICES | $153,550 |
| LEGAL AID OF WEST VIRGINIA | $145,524 |
| DISABILITY RIGHTS CALIFORNIA | $137,398 |
| CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS | $132,433 |
| NATIONAL REDISTRICTING FOUNDATION | $131,418 |
| LEGAL AID CHICAGO | $120,600 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–23, $3.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +57% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
316 repeat relationships — 140 still active in FY2023, 176 since wound down; 35 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2023, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.7M went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- TRTEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +47%
- LSLONE STAR LEGAL AID7× · 2017–2023 · $1.2M · revenue +57%
- GBGREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +120%
Funded once
- NONew Orleans Workers Ctr For Racial Justiceone grant, 2017 · $117k · revenue -48%
- GLGEORGIA LEGAL SERVICES PROGRAM INCgraduated2× · 2020–2024 · $107k · revenue +58%
- LALegal Aid of Western Missourione grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +14%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Work with DC courts, private bar & legal services providers to increase legal representations for low & moderate income DC residents, enhance efficiency of legal services, and reduce barriers to the judicial system.
CIVIL LIBERTIES DEFENSE CENTER (CLDC) educates the general public about their rights and privileges under the US Constitution and provides free legal support to climate and social justice activists.
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
Afl-cio union lawyers alliance was established to better the conditions of working men and women and their families by enhancing the quality of legal representation that is available to the afl-cio and the national and international unions…
Public interest legal activities
To provide civil legal services to low-income individuals and to promote equal access to the justice system through advocacy, legal counseling, innovative self-help services, in depth legal representation, community education, and economic…
Legal Link removes legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem.
Sexual Violence Law Center (SVLC) is a nonprofit law firm that protects the safety, privacy, and civil rights of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Washington through holistic and trauma-informed practices rooted in race and…
Community legal services is a non-profit law firm committed to increasing fairness in the civil justice system by advocating, litigating, and educating on behalf of arizonas most underserved communities.
The D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center provides free legal services through pro bono lawyers to low-income individuals, nonprofit organizations and small businesses primarily in the District of Columbia. The Pro Bono Center also recruits and trains…
Legal aid of east tennessee provides legal representation, legal education, and other civil legal services for the low-income population in our community through advocacy of all types.
The Austin Community Law Center is a nonprofit law firm. Our mission is to make legal representation radically more affordable, invest in a stronger community, and fight for justice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Colorado Legal Services and the most unlike its peers is Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 44 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
454 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INC ↗
- Who funds LONE STAR LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NEW MEXICO IMMIGRANT LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds EQUIP FOR EQUALITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK LEGAL ASSISTANCE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE INC ↗
- Who funds BET TZEDEK ↗
- Who funds KIND INC ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID JUSTICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF WESTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN JUSTICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds National Center for Youth Law ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF NORTHWEST TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Alaska Legal Services Corporation ↗
- Who funds KIDS IN NEED FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY RIGHTS TEXAS ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA LEGAL AID SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Equal Justice Center ↗
- Who funds ROOT & REBOUND ↗
- Who funds Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc ↗
- Who funds Texas Fair Defense Project ↗
- Who funds PRAIRIE STATE LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL VIRGINIA LEGAL AID SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CABRINI GREEN LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds OneJustice ↗
- Who funds LAWNDALE CHRISTIAN LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF WEST VIRGINIA INC ↗
- Who funds Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF ARKANSAS ↗
- Who funds Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TAHIRIH JUSTICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds HOUSTON VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Indiana Legal Services Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN COALITION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC COUNSEL ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Legal Services Corporation · The Skadden Foundation · American College of Bankruptcy Foundation · The Sidley Austin Foundation · The Morrison & Foerster Foundation · California Access to Justice Commission · The Impact Fund · The Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Foundation · Borealis Philanthropy · Vera Institute of Justice Inc · Immigrant Justice Corps Inc · The New York Bar Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Equal Justice Works funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Dove Inc — 60% of income from government
- Health Law Advocates Inc — 52% of income from government
- Florida Legal Services Inc — 39% of income from government
- Legal Services of North Florida Inc — 27% of income from government
- Gulfcoast Legal Services Inc — 27% of income from government
- Baltimore Bar Foundation Inc — 23% of income from government
- Bay Area Legal Services Inc — 14% of income from government
- Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma Inc — 13% of income from government
- Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County Inc — 10% of income from government
- Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service Inc — 7% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Community Legal Services of Prince George's County — 4% of income from government
- Greater Boston Legal Services Inc — 3% of income from government
- Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida Inc — 2% of income from government
- Northeast New Jersey Legal Services Corporation — 2% of income from government
- Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc — 2% of income from government
- Youth Advocacy Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Legal Aid Service of Broward County Inc — 1% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.