As the nonprofit founded by Bryan Stevenson gets ready for the national release of Just Mercy, a Hollywood film based on his criminal-justice activism, its focus is largely on getting renewed attention for its mission. But it also knows it may get a surge in donations.
“We definitely want to make sure that we’re able to handle and process donations and acknowledgments — to be responsive to our supporters,” says Jacqueline Jones-Peace, development director and senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit founded by Stevenson.
The nonprofit has 150 staff members and an annual operating budget of $13 million. It provides legal services to the poor, works to change public attitudes and policies toward incarceration, and seeks to end racial bias in the criminal-justice system. It also operates a museum and a memorial documenting the nation’s history of racial injustices, including lynchings.
The nonprofit has been riding a wave of attention since the museum and memorial opened in April 2018. It got another boost in June with the release of the HBO documentary True Justice; Brian Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, and then again in August when the trailer was released for the Just Mercy movie starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson. The movie was produced by Participant Media, a for-profit company started by the philanthropist Jeff Skoll (former president of eBay) to support films intended to spur social change. The studio’s other credits include On the Basis of Sex, a biography of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Green Book, the story of an interracial friendship in the deep South in 1962; and Waiting for Superman, a documentary about public schools in America.
Difficult Discussions
Just Mercy will be released on Christmas Day in Los Angeles and New York to get in on awards season, but it will be broadly released in January. Limited audiences have already gotten a sneak preview, including one Wednesday in Los Angeles, hosted by the California Endowment and Liberty Hill Foundation. The screening was followed by a panel discussion. Robert Ross, chief executive of the California Endowment, said the film presents a great opportunity for foundations, nonprofits, activists, and others to build relationships as they work toward common goals.
“It’s a story well told about the intersection of the nation’s legacy of racism and the criminal-justice system,” says Ross.
The story of how Stevenson started his nonprofit on a shoestring is also a powerful example for both donors and nonprofits, Ross says.
“For foundations who support the work of advocacy and activism, it’s a reminder of how those investments can pay off and result in structural change,” he says.
Participants at the forum Wednesday also noted that the movie could be helpful for nonprofits trying to raise money to advance an overhaul of the criminal-justice system.
Subtle Approach
At the Equal Justice Initiative, the movie has prompted the nonprofit to redesign its website to make it more responsive to supporters, says Jones-Peace. The organization also created a movie-centric new website that tells people where they can buy theater tickets and how to subscribe to the Equal Justice Initiative’s newsletter.
However, the organization takes a subtle approach to fundraising, and it isn’t explicitly tying pitches to the movie.The nonprofit has six people on its development staff and is taking a go-slow approach to expanding that team, says Jones-Peace. The group will likely hire more fundraising help on a short-term basis early next year and then assess whether it needs to expand its development staff for the long haul.
Jones-Peace says that instead of pushing a hard-sell fundraising agenda, the nonprofit is focused on using the movie mainly to raise awareness of the problems in the nation’s criminal-justice system.
“We need resources to continue the legal work that we do,” she says, “but we want people to have these difficult conversations and engage in this work.”
Dan Parks is the Chronicle’s senior editor for digital and data.
