Alaska Institute for Justice Receives $2M Gift for Human Rights Legal Services
Community interpreters speaking Turkish, Spanish, German, Korean, Hmong, Dinka, and Nuer gather at a Language Interpreter Center training on Interpretation Principles: Best Practices, Ethics, and Resources for new interpreters held in spring 2023.
Alaska Institute for Justice
Alaska Institute for Justice (AIJ) was one of the highest scoring organizations which applied for the Yield Giving open call and received $2 million from the charity to support human rights work in Alaska.
Helping Where It’s Needed Most
“The amazing thing about this gift is, there is no time requirement within which it needs to be spent, or reporting requirements,” says AIJ Executive Director Robin Bronen. She says the funding will be used to assist the people and communities the nonprofit serves in Alaska; exactly how will be discussed at an upcoming AIJ board meeting.
MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving described AIJ as one of the awardees working with people and in places experiencing the greatest need in the United States. Scott, former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, owns a 4 percent share of Amazon. She created Yield Giving “to share a financial fortune created through the effort of countless people,” its website states. According to its website, Yield Giving has “yielded” more than $17.3 billion to more than 2,300 nonprofits “to use as they see fit for the benefit of others.”
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April 2024
AIJ’s community-led work advances human rights and equity through legal services for immigrant and limited-English-proficient survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault. AIJ is the only nonprofit in Alaska which provides immigration legal services and also trains bilingual Alaskans to work as interpreters and translators.
The organization also provides language access and justice work with Alaska Native communities threatened by climate change. AIJ is now in its nineteenth year.
In March 2023, Yield Giving launched an open call for community-led, community-focused organizations whose explicit purpose is to enable individuals and families to achieve substantive improvement in their well-being through foundational resources.
The open call received 6,353 applications. Yield Giving initially planned for 250 awards of $1 million each. In the fall of 2023, organizations top-rated by their peers advanced to a second round of review by an external evaluation panel recruited for experience relevant to this cause, and underwent a final round of due diligence. In light of the incredible work of these organizations, as judged by their peers and external panelists, the donor team decided to expand the awardee pool and the award amount.
Bronen says, “AIJ is deeply grateful for this gift which will significantly increase AIJ’s capacity to serve Alaskans who are experiencing some of the greatest needs within the United States from the devastating impacts of climate change and the highest rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in the nation. Protecting human rights and working towards equity for Indigenous and underserved remote communities are AIJ’s core values to ensure all Alaskans can be safe and resilient.”
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