Gerald R. Dodge Foundation Awards Grants to 30 Organizations

Today, we are excited to announce that the Dodge Foundation’s latest cycle of grants provides support to over 30 organizations focused on addressing the root cause and repair of structural racism and inequity across New Jersey. These organizations are working on everything from building power among immigrant communities to advocating for housing and environmental justice.

We have been honored to partner with our Imagine a New Way grantees over the last few years, including those we supported in our first grantmaking cycle in 2023. In addition to those we are announcing today, we have been able to fund organizations that have already mobilized meaningful change for communities across the state. Just last week, advocates stood at Perth Amboy’s ferry port where slave ships docked from Africa in the 1700s. During a Juneteenth celebration, our partner, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, launched the New Jersey Reparations Council to measure slavery’s impact, to determine how to repair the damage, and to repay the generations who suffered. The Council will establish nine committees to examine the wealth gap, disparities in health and incarceration, school segregation and more.

The announcement of the new Council builds on the important impacts of NJISJ over the last few years. In 2021, NJISJ was part of a coalition that secured $8.4 million in state funds to create “restorative justice hubs” in Camden, Newark, Paterson, and Trenton, offering services for young people returning from incarceration. Other Imagine a New Way partners have also had tremendous impact – just last year, our grantee partners at Salvation and Social Justice successfully advocated to require, for the first time, New Jersey police officers to be licensed — as doctors and lawyers are — and set rules for decertifying officers who engage in misconduct.