Nonprofit Helping People Succeed After Prison Receives Over $700,000 To Support Its Mission

DURHAM, N.C., April 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network (FICGN) was awarded multiple grants to support its mission of creating learning experiences for justice system-impacted students and professionals.

The Laughing Gull Foundation (LGF) awarded FICGN a grant to create a professional development and leadership program, which will help justice system impacted people develop the skills and knowledge needed to become leaders in the workplace and in their communities. "With increased resources, our grantee partners will continue their transformative work to increase opportunity for justice–impacted people, especially Black and Brown students who have been most harmed by mass incarceration," said Hilary Rau, Higher Education in Prison Program Manager at LGF. 

Earlier this year, FICGN received a grant from the Mellon Foundation as a part of Imagining Freedom, the foundation's multiyear initiative that funds and amplifies the work of organizations engaging in efforts that counter the criminal legal system's forces of dehumanization, isolation, and separation. The grant will help FICGN build capacity to help formerly incarcerated individuals succeed in higher education and beyond. "How do we understand our society, that is, one where we don't 'other' people and forget about them, where we don't dehumanize people and say that they don't deserve some of the same basic human rights?" says the foundation's president, Elizabeth Alexander. "The right to learn, the right to dream, the right to seek knowledge, the right to imagine."

Lastly, the Vera Institute of Justice awarded FICGN a community grant to support chapter expansion across the U.S., supporting and empowering members in creating community in their regions. Nick Turner, President and Director said, "We realize that Vera's size, long presence in the field, and visibility positions us in a way that many of our smaller partners are not, especially those led by people with lived-experience."

"We are incredibly grateful for the grant funding from all our partners and cannot wait to expand our work," said Terrell A. Blount, Executive Director of FICGN. "Their investment in FICGN supports what hopefully becomes a practice of foundations providing adequate support not only to organizations that serve system-impacted students and professionals, but ones that are also led by them."

About FICGN:

The Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network (FICGN) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes the education and empowerment of formerly incarcerated people through a collective community. FICGN has over 1,600 members in nearly all 50 U.S. states and several countries who are formerly incarcerated and have achieved higher education attainment, working in various fields in the public and private sectors. FICGN unites system-impacted scholars to use their collective knowledge, resources and lived expertise to support one another personally and professionally.

SOURCE Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network