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Purposeful Innovation: 3 Ways Impact Justice Selects its Partners
Choosing the right partner is critical. Effective partnerships can increase an organization’s reach and overall impact.
Impact Justice – creator of the Breakthrough Challenge-winning innovation The Homecoming Project – has a pretty simple method when selecting partners.
We follow our hearts and go with what naturally feels like a good fit for us and the people we serve.
There are three must-haves we look for when selecting a partner.
#1 Our partners’ interests and missions must align.
At Impact Justice, our common humanity is a core value that we ensure is represented in every aspect of our work. Our partners must have this same interest.
Impact Justice dares to dream of a humane and restorative system of justice in the United States.
Through innovation, research, policy and advocacy, we are forging a new path to a justice system that is fair to all of us. The organizations we partner with must be working toward the same goal.
Our work recognizes the value in every person and the reality that any system that dehumanizes some of us dehumanizes us all. Of course, we look for our partners’ work to reflect this as well.
#2 Partners must be service oriented.
Strong partnerships are key when serving the reentry population.
Because the needs of returning citizens reentering their communities are often complex, having partners that specialize in the service industry helps make our wrap-around services more effective and complete.
For example, Impact Justice provides a wide range of services to support successful reentry.
Our Homecoming Project provides a stipend to homeowners in exchange for renting a room to someone returning home from prison.
We have also partnered with R Street to shift the narrative about employing formerly incarcerated people through advocacy, communications and policy efforts.
Again, it’s all about service to others.
#3 Partners must know the importance of investing in people.
We believe this value is paramount to the success of the people we serve and our communities. We know that if our program participants are successful, society will benefit as a whole.
We invest in people at every level. Whether through The Homecoming Project, Food In Prison or the Men and Trauma Project, we know that it takes funding to move the needle forward.
Impact Justice focuses on and invests in three big issues – preventing system involvement to end unnecessary contact with the justice system; improving conditions and opportunities for people who are incarcerated; and supporting successful re-entry. We seek out partners who do the same.
Impact Justice joins in partnership with communities, experts, advocates and policy leaders across the political spectrum at every level of government.
We bring to bear all of our curiosity, determination, idealism, problem-solving skills, knowledge, lived experience and outside-the-box ideas. We believe this is how we have been so successful in our innovation and on the cutting edge of change.
We collaborate on purpose as part of greater movements to end individual, collective and systemic oppression, so that all people are free to thrive.
Just like the partners we seek, we are committed to reducing and ultimately ending the trauma and pain that we see in this country through the work we do.
