Institute Intelligence, June 2025: Celebrating a Year of Community-Based Restorative Justice in NYC, Rethinking How We Do RFPs and Grantmaking
By Carla Sinclair, Senior Communications Associate, and Alisa Orlowsky, Communications Associate
With June coming to a close, New York City is heating up—both from 100+ degree weather and with the energy of the recent local elections, Pride Month festivities, and the overall electricity of summer in the city. With our own gatherings, project kickoffs, and releases, we’re charging into the summer as well; see below for recaps of our two-day restorative justice celebration, our newest internship cohort, and ideas to spark change in how we solicit and administer social services, among other updates.
And a very happy Pride 🌈 to our friends, partners, and network! While our work aims to uplift communities from all different backgrounds, this month we wanted to highlight some of our partnerships that support LGBTQ+ folks, from youth programs to addressing gaps in services for LGBTQ+ survivors of violence to mental healthcare for trans and gender non-conforming people.
Advancing Justice
Celebrating a Year of Community-Based Restorative Justice in NYC
As part of the plan to safely shift New York City away from reliance on jails and toward a more equitable system, CUNY ISLG has been working with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) to create the Community-Based Restorative Justice Initiative (CBRJ) since last summer, when we selected 16 unique community-based organizations to be a part of the Community-Based Restorative Justice Program (CBRJ).
The CBRJ invested in these organizations to build their operational, strategic, and programmatic capacity as well as restorative justice practices. This is done through ISLG’s expertise in training and technical assistance (TTA), grant management, performance measurement, and nonprofit leadership.
This June, a year after that first launch, ISLG convened these grantees along with other field experts, leaders, and philanthropists for a celebration of the past 12 months of work.
Get to know the 16 grantees and their work in the first year.
The event brought together the people doing the work on the ground alongside the training and technical assistance experts who’ve provided support along the way, as well as the funders who can keep the work going. Through meeting together, discussing the state of the field, and breaking bread, the event marked a milestone for CBRJ while preparing for the road ahead.
To commemorate the past year, ISLG created a Grantee Yearbook to capture the impact of the CBRJ and acknowledge a year’s worth of incredible work from the 16 CBRJ program grantees—check it out here.
Optimizing Government & Institutions
Rethinking RFPs and Grant Management for Real Impact
Grassroots organizations are named as such because they are grounded in the communities they serve, growing from and taking root in the same neighborhoods as the people they work with. This means they have a distinct and thoughtful perspective on pressing challenges, but it also means they can face challenges accessing opportunities and resources to design, implement, and evaluate real solutions.
We’ve worked as an intermediary between these community organizations and their governmental and philanthropic funders for over a decade. In this time, we’ve learned that the Request-for-Proposal (RFP) and other parts of grantmaking often leave out smaller, grassroots community organizations who are closest to those they serve.
Using our Community-Based Restorative Justice Program and Grassroots Policy Incubator as examples, our Carla Sinclair, Nathalie Lebron, and Patrick Hart dig into ways that funders and grant managers can create a more inclusive process that uplifts new ideas without sacrificing program quality and accountability.
Promoting Opportunity
Drafting a Blueprint for Social Service Navigation
Even in places with many social service providers like New York City, systemic inequality and a wide array of population needs mean residents may struggle to connect to the supports and resources that could help them thrive. Youth and young adults, survivors of crime, and people involved in the criminal legal and other systems, in particular, would benefit from these resources, but are more likely to face challenges accessing them.
Service navigation programs are a key piece of the solution. Though the exact approach varies based on the focus population and relevant services, service navigation programs bring together teams with the training, professional background, and/or lived experience to help connect people, usually from specific underserved communities, with the services they need.
Over the past decade, CUNY ISLG has worked with partners citywide to design and pilot several service navigation programs, evaluate them, and understand the broader service navigation landscape in NYC. From this experience, we’ve compiled lessons learned, best practices, and recommendations to help government and public institutions connect communities with care, creating safety and opportunity for all.
Introducing our 2025 Public Policy Pathways Interns!
We're thrilled to introduce the third cohort of the Public Policy Pathways Internship (PPPI). This paid summer program provides CUNY students with hands-on experience working in the public sector, from state and local governments to community-based organizations.
Over the next few weeks, this group of undergraduate and graduate students from across CUNY campuses, disciplines, and degree programs will work alongside ISLG’s research, policy, data science, legal, and operations teams on projects that impact communities across New York City and beyond.
“My story is just one of many that show how mentorship and access to opportunities can truly change the trajectory of a student’s life.
That’s why it’s such an honor to now manage this paid internship program, thoughtfully designed to introduce CUNY students to meaningful careers in the nonprofit and government sectors.”
- Nathalie Lebròn, Senior Policy Associate & PPPI Manager
Lessons Learned from Developing a Trauma-Informed Service Ecosystem in East Harlem
Healing from trauma is a complex process and unique to each person, shaped by their life experiences. Integrating trauma-informed approaches into service delivery and program infrastructure can help service providers better understand and support participants healing from past trauma in their journeys.
Funded by the Criminal Justice Investment Initiative—our partnership with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office—the Center for Trauma Innovation in East Harlem has been developing services and programs to address trauma experienced by individuals and communities impacted by the criminal legal system.
Drawing on a mixed-methods framework rooted in community-based participatory research, the final evaluation of the Center for Trauma Innovation explores the successes and challenges in how the program supported both program participants and program staff.
On our blog, researcher Brandon Martinez breaks down what they found.
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