Why we opened our books, how the data was built, and where to find the full 80-page report.
Dear colleagues,
When we began this project, we asked a simple question: after three decades of funding impact litigation, what does our own record actually show? Foundations ask grantees for evidence constantly. We decided to hold ourselves to the same standard.
The seven years of data in this report cover 165 grants and roughly $3 million. By philanthropic standards these are small numbers. That is precisely the finding we want you to sit with: a $15,000 grant, placed at the right procedural moment, routinely unlocks relief measured in the millions — and changes measured in generations.
We are publishing the data, the wins, and the losses alike, because the field cannot learn from records it cannot see. We hope funders will read this as an invitation: litigation funding is one of the highest-leverage instruments in social justice philanthropy, and it remains one of the least used.
With gratitude to our grantees, who do the hard part,
The dataset covers every grant awarded between fiscal years 2016 and 2023 (July 1, 2015 – June 30, 2023): 165 grants totaling $3,003,450. Grant records were drawn from the Fund's administrative files; case outcomes were coded from court dockets, settlement documents, and structured interviews with grantee counsel conducted between March 2024 and September 2025.
Issue-area categories are mutually exclusive and assigned by primary claim. Class size figures use the certified class where certification was granted, and counsel's good-faith estimate of the putative class otherwise. Outcomes are reported only for the 112 cases concluded as of June 30, 2025; 53 cases remain active or on appeal and are excluded from outcome rates.
Limitations. Monetary relief figures are drawn from public settlement documents and may understate confidential settlements. Attribution is inherently partial: an Impact Fund grant is rarely a case's only funding, and outcome rates should not be read as caused solely by the grant. Full coding rules appear in Appendix B of the complete report.
80 pages · Year-by-year tables, 24 figures, six case studies, full methodology and coding appendices. Free to download and share with attribution.
The Impact Fund thanks the grantees, counsel, and class representatives who shared their records and their stories for this report.