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California · Nonprofit

Essie Justice Group

Essie Justice Group (California) receives grants from 78 organizations whose IRS filings report $36,472,186 to it, the largest being Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($12,644,500). 38 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 78% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.

Revenue FY2024
$6.0M
Funders on record
78
Grants received
$36M
Net assets
$14M
38/78 repeat fundersgrants exceed reported revenue in one year
01What it does

What Essie Justice Group does

Mission

Essie Justice Group Is building a loving and powerful community of women with incarcerated loved ones. It's mission is to end mass incarcerations harm to women and communities.

As stated on its FY2024 Form 990.

Program

  1. In 2024, Essie Justice Group provided leadership development and healing justice programming for women with incarcerated loved ones in California and advocated for material improvements to women with incarcerated loved ones' lives. We facilitated three, nine-week Healing to Advocacy Program cohorts, graduating 31 new women with incarcerated loved ones from this program into our Essie Sisterhooda support network of 500 (and growing) system-impacted women with access to a monthly membership support group, free therapy, resource sharing, community building events, and ongoing opportunities for leadership development. To support women being able to attend our programming, we provided transportation support, childcare, and over 40 hot and healthy meals to women and their children in 2024. We trained 42 members via our Campaign School on how to make change in their communities and worked in partnership with a local advocacy coalition to support the creation and implementation of Care First pretrial services in Los Angeles County.

    $4,213,285 spent
    100% of program spending

The program described on its FY2024 Form 990. Program spending in total: $4,213,285.

02The organization over time

The organization over time

Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.

100 = 20172017 Revenue 100 ($2.1M) Expenses 100 ($1.1M) Net assets 100 ($2.2M)2018 Revenue 137 ($2.9M) Expenses 155 ($1.7M) Net assets 154 ($3.4M)2019 Revenue 154 ($3.3M) Expenses 161 ($1.8M) Net assets 223 ($4.9M)2020 Revenue 320 ($6.8M) Expenses 210 ($2.3M) Net assets 424 ($9.4M)2021 Revenue 324 ($6.9M) Expenses 332 ($3.7M) Net assets 569 ($13M)2022 Revenue 466 ($9.9M) Expenses 506 ($5.6M) Net assets 764 ($17M)2023 Revenue 152 ($3.2M) Expenses 560 ($6.2M) Net assets 631 ($14M)2024 Revenue 281 ($6.0M) Expenses 527 ($5.8M) Net assets 638 ($14M)
'17'18'19'20'21'22'23'24
Revenue (281)Expenses (527)Net assets (638)Peer revenue range

Balance sheet

Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2021 to 2022, from $13M to $18M (+40%).

$2.3M
$4.0M
$5.1M
$9.7M
$13M
$18M
$15M
$16M
'17'18'19'20'21'22'23'24
Total assetsTotal liabilities

How it's funded, over time

Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.

2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
ContributionsProgram revenueInvestmentOther

95% of Essie Justice Group’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (93% for the typical peer).

This organization
Typical peer · 1,394 orgs

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.

$1.0M
’17
$1.2M
’18
$1.5M
’19
$4.5M
’20
$3.2M
’21
$4.3M
’22
−$3.0M
’23
$160k
’24
26
months of
reserve

Leadership and staff

The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.

Board chair

Kirsten Levingston

Board Chair

As listed on its FY2024 Form 990.

'17'18'19'20'21'22'23'24
Listed999814161718
Joined·+0+2+1+7+3+2+5
No longer listed·0221114
03Who funds it

Who funds it, year by year

2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 11 funders to 25 funders, grant income rose $1.3M → $5.4M.

22 of 78 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 78% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.

From the IRS filings of Essie Justice Group’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 78 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How concentrated its funding is

Essie Justice Group has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 35% of grant income, and it takes 3 funders to reach half.

the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 3 funders to its left

81% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Essie Justice Group.

35%
largest funder
65%
top three
~6
effective funders

Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 29% · 2018 84% · 2019 78% · 2020 32% · 2021 56% · 2022 46% · 2023 47% — growing more concentrated.

“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How long its funders stay

29% of Essie Justice Group's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 49% give in more than one year at all.

first grant+1y+2y+3y+4y+5y+6y

Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.

Where its funders are

78% of Essie Justice Group's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $8.2M that is directly attributable, 51% of it comes from California funders.

VT
WA
MN
IL
MI
NY
MA
NV
IA
NJ
CT
CA
VA
MD
DE
AZ
NM
DC
OK

In-state vs out-of-state, by year

’17
’18
’19
’20
’21
’22
’23
California out of state home

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $28M arriving through sponsors registered in 11 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

04Its place in the field

Against its field

Essie Justice Group holds deeper cash reserves than three-quarters of the 1,337 crime & legal nonprofits its size.

Operating margin3% · below the median
Months of reserve26.1mo · top quartile
Revenue growth (annualized)16% · above the median

this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 1,337 crime & legal nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2024

Organizations like Essie Justice Group

Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.

In California

Nationally

05Profile & governance

Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.

Where the money goes

72% of spending goes to programs.

Program 72%Management 15%Fundraising 12%

Governance

10
board members
90%
independent
✓Conflict-of-interest policy✓Whistleblower policy✓Document retention✓Board reviewed the 990✓Audited financials

Public support

97%

Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.

Footprint & structure

Files a return copy in 1 state

CA

Screen this organization

A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Essie Justice Group: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.

A paid feature, included from the $75 plan up. Sign in to download.

Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf

Questions and answers

Who funds Essie Justice Group?
Essie Justice Group (California) receives grants from 78 organizations whose IRS filings report $36,472,186 to it, the largest being Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($12,644,500). 38 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 78% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
How many funders does Essie Justice Group have?
IRS filings report 78 organizations giving $36,472,186 in grants to Essie Justice Group, 38 of which have funded it in more than one year.
Who is the largest funder of Essie Justice Group?
Silicon Valley Community Foundation is the largest funder on record, with $12,644,500 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
How can an organization like Essie Justice Group find more funders?
Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.

These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2017–2024), and the filings of 78 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing