As part of our process of assembling stories for our 30th Anniversary Publication, FJC contacted a number of longtime partners to ask how critical stages of their organization’s life cycle were affected by FJC’s support. We were blown away by the detailed, specificity of their responses!
For reasons of space, we condensed their testimonials in our publication, and we present them in full here.
FJC has been a longtime supporter of Envision Freedom Fund’s work at several critical inflection points of our mission. Since shortly after our founding a decade ago (then as Brooklyn Community Bail Fund), FJC has been a steadfast partner.
Between 2017 and today, the FJC group has allocated over $3,000,000 to Envision Freedom Fund to support our previous bail and current immigration bond fund. These millions of dollars go directly into freeing our neighbors from the inhumanity and cruelty of incarceration. Understanding the delicate dance between meeting community need and sustainably expanding organizational capacity, FJC also provided critical general operating support that has allowed us to scale our post-release support with compassion and individualized care.
In our early years, we were a local bail fund just beginning to build our model; today, we are the largest immigration bond fund in the country and the only one operating in New York State. FJC was critical in making this transition. In response to intensifying ICE raids and enforcement of immigration laws in 2018, we began paying immigration bonds. FJC’s guidance, encouragement, and fiscal support made this nimble move possible.
Since then, we have spent over $14M to free 1,500 of our immigrant neighbors from ICE detention, including 345 people this year alone.
Since January 2024, requests for bond assistance have surged to five times previous years’ need, and FJC met that moment with equally extraordinary generosity, including $1 million in bond funding this year, followed by another $1 million just six months later. Without these revolving grants, we simply could not have kept pace with the scale of need we were seeing.
FJC hasn’t just funded our growth, they’ve funded our ability to meet the moment, again and again, at exactly the inflection points when the need was greatest.
—Rosa Santana, Co-Executive Director, Envision Freedom Fund
