CHICAGO ALLIANCE TO END HOMELESSNESS
The Butler Family Fund was an early funder of the Chicago Alliance to support their work to create lasting change to Chicago's homeless system. The Chicago Alliance brings best practices, system coordination and evaluation to Chicago's Plan to End Homelessness; manages major state and federal grants for homelessness, including over $45 million in federal money and $3.3 million in state homelessness prevention funds; advances policies to end homelessness; and increases public awareness and support for ending homelessness. In 2009, the Chicago Alliance brought major focus to leading efforts to organize the response of city government, neighboring communities and homeless service providers to take advantage of The Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing program (HPRP).
NATIONAL ALLIANCE TO END HOMELESSNESS
The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to ending homelessness in the United States by promoting better public policy, advancing data and research, and building capacity to implement best practices. With Butler Family Fund dollars, the Alliance has increased federal investment in ending family homelessness, informed effective policies and budget priorities to benefit homeless people and families, and taken an active role in assisting communities implement these innovative new policies to change their local homeless assistance programs. The Alliance is committed to a solutions-based, research-informed approach to ending homelessness – with the understanding that ending homelessness will require a systematic and strategic shift in the way we, as a country, approach homelessness.
NATIONAL HOUSING LAW PROJECT
The Butler Family Fund is helping to sustain NHLP's national leadership in establishing and enforcing housing rights for those most vulnerable and disadvantaged. NHLP's programs include ongoing efforts to preserve the federally assisted housing stock, to protect its tenants from displacement, and to empower those residents to be active participants in the creation of policies and practices that affect their housing. Other programs include advocacy and legal support for the needs of disadvantaged communities and low-income tenants in the current foreclosure crisis and upholding the rights of people who are traditionally challenged in their housing security including survivors of domestic violence, people with disabilities, and immigrants and people with limited English proficiency. The Butler Family Fund's general support allows NHLP to engage across these programs in a broad array of activities that include legal and technical assistance, development of resource materials, policy analysis and advocacy, and litigation support as together, we partner to advance housing justice.
TEXAS DEFENDER SERVICE
Our support helped enable TDS to influence the development and the actual quality of direct legal services for capital public defender units in the State of Texas, including the regional capital public defender office in West Texas and the recently-created Office of Capital Writs for state habeas corpus representation. The creation of these two offices represent a major opportunity for improvement in the quality of capital representation by creating a system with accountability, oversight and enhanced professionalism, and will serve as a model as the state continues its progress toward indigent defense delivery systems that best ensure quality representation. Since the creation of these offices the quality of public defense in Texas has improved and the number of cases resolved with a life verdict have risen.
THE NEW MEXICO COALITION TO REPEAL THE DEATH PENALTY
Our early funding of the newly professionalized New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty supported a campaign which resulted in the repeal of the death penalty in New Mexico in March, 2009. After repeal, the Coalition reached out to other national and state organizations to share their best practices to advance repeal efforts in other states. The Coalition disbanded in 2010 to form The New Mexico Murder Victim Family Advocacy Project to ensure that New Mexico provides support and resources for victim family members in order to solidify the abolition victory. Members continue to monitor any death penalty reinstatement efforts.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE JOURNALISTS
In 2003, Criminal Justice Journalists, a small nonprofit, sought help from us to start a daily news digest aimed at improving news media coverage of criminal justice issues. The group later obtained regular funding from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City to keep the digest going. It now is sent by e-mail daily to several thousand subscribers and others see it on its website. As the only such comprehensive publication issued by an independent source, it is read by both journalists and criminal justice professionals.