“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” 
—Frederick Douglass

In the history of great social movements, it is coalitions—groups of people and organizations working together toward a common cause—that make the most significant impact. An individual organization can only do so much by itself, but when organizations combine forces to push in the same direction, it becomes possible to move mountains. As a report on coalitions by the Climate Advocacy Lab describes, “Research confirms that for many major policy changes, it is the work of coalitions that explains whether or not change endures.”¹ 

In other words, coalitions can be societal game-changers.

In the US, one of the great policy success stories is the change in national attitudes and laws regarding domestic and sexual violence, and the corresponding reduction in both forms of violence over the last few decades. As recently as 1978, very few domestic violence programs existed in this country. Only one or two states had an organized coalition to address an issue that was broadly considered to be a “private matter,” rather than a societal crisis.²

However, in the middle of the 1970s, a group of grassroots women’s rights activists and survivors of violence came together to create the Battered Women’s Movement in order to bring the issue of domestic violence to the forefront of society, help shelter and support those impacted by it, and demand change.⁶ In the ensuing years, domestic violence coalitions organized and proliferated, engaging in countless efforts to raise awareness of this issue at the local, state, and national level. 

As an example, one such coalition in Illinois “spoke to hundreds of community groups and professional agencies about battered women’s stories, explained the significance of violence, detailed how violence becomes sanctioned, dispelled common myths, and challenged community members to provide funding and other support to assist abused women. The coalition mobilized around passage of a state law to protect women and require police training on domestic violence, among other accomplishments.”⁷  

This cultural and political shift brought about tremendous positive change and measurable results: “Annual rates of domestic violence dropped by 67% between 1993 and 2022. Rapes and sexual assaults declined by 56%. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, which was created by VAWA in 1996, has received more than 7 million calls.”¹⁰  

For both outside observers and members of the domestic violence movement, it was coalitions that played a uniquely important role in bringing about this change. “Coalition purposes are multiple, and their structures and accomplishments diverse,” Schechter wrote, “But their importance to the movement as a whole has been immeasurable.”⁵ 

“Community violence” refers to acts of violence that occur between individuals outside the context of an intimate relationship and most often in public places. Thus, community violence is very much related to domestic violence, and yet distinct—with a unique set of causes and solutions. Community violence intervention (CVI) refers to a set of non-punitive, community-led strategies that are designed to interrupt the transmission of this violence by engaging those at highest risk through the provision of individually tailored and culturally responsive support services.¹¹  

In the last few years, there’s been an effort to organize CVI coalitions similar to those established in the domestic violence field, as described above. In many ways, the movement to end community violence is in a similar position as the domestic violence movement was in the 1980s, with a number of important wins under its belt and growing organizational power, but with much still left to do when it comes to building infrastructure, influence, and recognition.

As of the publication of this report, there were at least a dozen statewide CVI coalitions in existence—compared to none just a few short years ago—and at least one national CVI coalition, Invest In Us,¹² created with the specific goal of reducing community violence through expanding resources for effective public health and community-based violence intervention strategies. The State CVI Coalition Alliance (SCCA), launched in 2024 with the express purpose of fostering the rise of statewide CVI coalitions through networking, information sharing, policy development, and advocacy.

Although relatively new, these coalitions have already notched several important wins. At the national level, Invest In Us and its allies pushed to bring about the federal government’s largest-ever investment in community-based violence intervention and prevention programs in the early 2020s via the American Rescue Plan Act (APRA),¹³ with support from the Biden administration. In addition, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA)—the first major gun violence prevention legislation at the federal level in three decades—included a five-year, $250 million investment in CVI that funded the new Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative (CVIPI).¹⁴ The BSCA was passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in 2022.¹⁵ 

In 2023, California’s statewide CVI coalition, known as the CalVIP Coalition, succeeded in passing the nation’s first state-level excise tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition, with proceeds funding violence reduction programs. This policy faced tremendous pushback from the gun lobby and hunting interests,¹⁶ but after more than a decade of defeat, it was the organized effort of the CalVIP Coalition that finally pushed it across the finish line. This was much more than a symbolic victory: The tax is estimated to generate tens of millions of dollars every single year for violence reduction programming, creating a sustainable funding baseline in a field where resources are still too scarce.

That’s why GIFFORDS Center for Violence Intervention is exploring all aspects of CVI coalition work at the local, state, and federal levels, from supportive policy to the nuts-and-bolts best practices of starting and running such coalitions. Our vision is for America to have robust and thriving CVI coalitions in all the jurisdictions where community violence is an ongoing threat to public safety.

The remainder of this report reviews the current state of CVI coalitions, examines policies that supported the successful expansion of domestic violence coalitions, and makes the case that public and private support for the growth of CVI coalitions is critical in the overall fight against gun violence in the US. 

By encouraging CVI coalitions to develop and thrive, policymakers in both parties and at all levels of government, as well as private funders, can help save lives from community violence—just as we’ve seen in the domestic violence space.

GIFFORDS Center for Violence Intervention defines a “state CVI coalition” as a group of organizations and individuals working together to build community, share best practices, and advance policies at the state level, with the goal of expanding resources and support for the effective implementation of local CVI strategies.

As with other social movements, state CVI coalitions largely emerged organically in the mid-to-late 2010s in response to a commonly perceived need: the lack of funding for CVI work and the absence of meaningful coordination between groups working on various aspects of community violence.²⁰ 

The origin and growth of California’s state CVI coalition, known as the CalVIP Coalition, is a helpful case study of both the basic characteristics of state CVI coalitions and their tremendous potential for impact.

To the surprise of many, California’s only investment in community-based violence intervention came from a tiny program known as the California Gang Reduction Intervention and Prevention program (CalGRIP), a gang-reduction initiative started by the Schwarzenegger administration in 2007. Despite CalGRIP’s strong preference for law enforcement approaches, the program was still funding some notable community-based public safety projects—namely, CVI efforts in Los Angeles, Oakland, and Richmond. 

In 2017, at the conclusion of the research project and as GIFFORDS employees were beginning to build relationships with some of CalGRIP’s funded entities—such as the Richmond Office of Neighborhood Safety—then Governor Jerry Brown announced the program’s funding would be eliminated entirely.

This created a unique opportunity for collective advocacy. 

“We called around to the small number of partners we knew at the time who were doing this kind of work and asked them what they thought about trying to organize to save CalGRIP in some way,” said Ari Freilich, who helped launch this initiative as a staff attorney for GIFFORDS Law Center and is now the director of California’s first Office of Gun Violence Prevention. “The consensus response was, ‘Absolutely, we’ll work with you to save CalGRIP, but only if we can also push the program in a new direction, with an emphasis on community-based approaches.’ Everyone agreed this was a great idea and we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.”²² 

That early victory, which included opening CalVIP grants up to community-based organizations for the very first time—with an emphasis on services for high-risk individuals—built trust and relationships between the small group of advocates. It also emphasized the need to remain connected and organized for years to come, in order to push for an increasingly ambitious agenda to make California a national leader in supporting local CVI work.

From 2017 to 2024, the CalVIP Coalition grew in size and influence, putting together an advocacy agenda that included getting CalVIP reforms placed into statute (achieved in 2019 with the passage of AB 1603, the Break the Cycle of Violence Act); significantly increasing overall funding for the program (achieved with a record-setting, three-year investment of $227 million in 2021); opening up Medicaid as a source of reimbursement for services provided by violence prevention professionals; and building relationships with CalVIP’s administering agency so community voices could be part of a feedback loop between the agency providing the funds and the groups doing the work on the ground. 

This process led the coalition to undertake an ambitious effort: the pursuit of the nation’s first state-level excise tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition, with revenues directed to violence prevention programs like CalVIP. The CalVIP Coalition was the force leading the charge in crafting this legislation and implementing the strategy to advocate for this bill’s successful passage. The bill, known as AB 28, was authored and championed by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel. 

Over a period of months in 2023, coalition members wrote letters, made phone calls, and filled legislative hearing rooms to the brim with supporters for AB 28. In the words of Julius Thibodeaux, leader of the CVI organization Movement 4 Life in Sacramento, “Through the partnership with Moms Demand Action and GIFFORDS we learned how to tune our message to legislators. This is critical for small organizations because this is a language we don’t typically use but is necessary for the advocacy work. You need both a bird’s eye view and a boots-on-the-ground view to achieve these public safety goals.”¹⁶ 

This effort culminated in a dramatic vote on the Senate floor in September 2023, with AB 28 passing by a single vote, which came from a senator in a conservative-leaning district who stood in the chamber and dedicated her vote to two young people who had lost their lives in a shooting in her district. “I am a firm supporter of our Second Amendment, but this is a little different. AB 28 is something that California needs, it’s something that my Senate District needs,” said Senator Melissa Hurtado, standing to cast her decisive vote. “This is not an attack on guns…this is a bill that is going to address an issue that is out there and really when it comes to our children, we need to be doing everything we can to protect them.”²³  

As the authors of the California Partnership for Safe Communities report wrote, “Earning that vote took a disciplined and strategic approach that combined the efforts of every practitioner, every community advocate and violence prevention expert, all of the local public officials who had been involved in successful gun violence reduction work, and all of the statewide education and awareness raising over several years, as well as the work of many determined lobbyists.”²³ 

This kind of coordination, and a policy win of this magnitude, could only have taken place within the context of a coalition, which created the platform to combine all of these disparate actors in a single and powerful voice. 

As it stands today, the CalVIP Coalition has dozens of organizational members and hundreds of individual members. The coalition is led by a diverse steering committee and monthly coalition meetings are hosted by a rotating roster of facilitators, helping to create shared ownership over meetings. Decision-making has always been by consensus and the coalition is increasingly relying on affinity committees to help move different bodies of work forward. The CalVIP Coalition continues to operate on a volunteer basis and does not exist as a formal 501(c)(3) or any other form of legal entity, although that is an ongoing point of strategic consideration among members. 

The CalVIP Coalition clearly demonstrates the role that state CVI coalitions can play when it comes to building the power of the community-based public safety movement and creating a policy environment that is supportive of the growth and development of CVI strategies in impacted communities.

California was likely the first such statewide CVI coalition, but others quickly followed and a number of national events helped to catalyze that growth. The combination of the US grappling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including devastating spikes in homicide levels across the country, and the reckoning of social justice activism responding to police brutality with the murder of George Floyd in 2020, are both factors that contributed to the nationwide spotlight to alternative approaches to violence intervention and prevention. 

These coalitions feature CVI practitioners, state-based gun violence prevention organizations, national gun violence prevention organizations, state government agencies, local government agencies, healthcare workers, law enforcement, and academic researchers.

There are several core goals and functions of CVI coalitions that are shared across these states, including the following: 

Accountability
Many state CVI coalitions formed to provide an accountability mechanism to state legislators and governmental agencies regarding how to best implement their investments to community violence intervention programs. Coalitions have worked to ensure that the voices of impacted communities are reflected in government-level decisions, and that investments are reaching the grassroots organizations and individuals doing the work on the ground.

Advocacy 
Most, if not all, state CVI coalitions were formed to amplify the need for states and cities to robustly invest in CVI strategies and to address a lack of funding in this particular area. In addition, this advocacy agenda has generally included policies to help facilitate the effective implementation of these investments, including through the creation of offices of violence prevention at the state and local levels, the elimination of the longstanding match requirement for CalVIP, and reforms allowing community-based organizations and tribal entities to apply directly for violence intervention funding.

Community Building
State CVI coalitions are a platform for the creation of a beloved community²⁵ and a place for individuals doing difficult and emotionally challenging work to find camaraderie, solidarity, and healing.

Education 
State CVI coalitions engage their community members, legislators, and the public at large on what CVI strategies are and how these strategies function in their cities, often serving as a bridge for frontline workers to speak directly with policymakers about the importance and impact of their work. 

Since their inception, many state CVI coalitions have been credited with achieving historic state investments and other policy wins:²⁶ 

Policy advocacy happens at the local, state, and national levels, and several years ago a national coalition was created to focus on federal CVI policy: the Invest in Us coalition.

Local and regional CVI coalitions also have an important role to play when it comes to breaking down silos between organizations and amplifying the impact of local advocacy efforts. An example of this is the Los Angeles Violence Intervention Coalition (LAVIC), which represents Black and Brown-led organizations that support the most violence-impacted communities in Los Angeles. 

LAVIC is a coalition made up of local organizations that provide community violence intervention and prevention services. While Los Angeles has had different iterations of CVI coalitions over the years, LAVIC, convened by the Urban Peace Institute, came together a few weeks prior to the pandemic. For the first time, the Urban Peace Institute had gathered leaders of local community-based organizations providing frontline CVI services across the city together for in-person fellowship. 

The group continued to convene and form an agenda to advocate for funding in order to help CVI groups during the surge in gun violence in 2020 and 2021. In October 2022, Urban Peace Institute and the LAVIC coalition published the LA Peace Plan representing the group’s 10 year vision for comprehensive safety throughout the city.³⁹ This plan included policy recommendations in four key areas: public leadership, community violence intervention, law enforcement, and partnerships and collaboration. The LAVIC engaged county and city representatives in the drafting and promoting of the public safety framework embedded in the LA Peace Plan. 

As a testament to the collective power built by the coalition and the momentum of the LA Peace Plan, once Karen Bass won the mayoral election, she enacted three major policy priorities included in the plan: Mayor Bass designated a Los Angeles Office of Community Safety, hired a deputy mayor of community safety, and increased the wage of CVI workers from $40,000 to $60,000.⁴⁰ This also led to the establishment of the LA Peacemakers Initiative, which funds 18 frontline CVI organizations utilizing $7.4 million in federal earmarks and $4 million in private dollars over a two-year period to strengthen Los Angeles’s community safety infrastructure.⁴¹ 

As this section has described, the rise of CVI coalitions is an important development in the broader movement to address community violence. So far, these coalitions have developed organically, with little to no formal support or direct resources from public or private sources. The next section of this report looks at how public policy in the US has intentionally fostered the development of domestic violence coalitions, which provides a roadmap for policymakers to provide similar support to CVI coalitions in the years to come. 

In just a few decades, America went from a nation where domestic violence was considered a “private issue,” with a small handful of scattered shelters for women, to one where every state and the federal government has invested billions of dollars to support a host of solutions to combat this issue. 

One woman who was a participant in the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence (PCADV) in the late 1970s described her experience this way: “It was an amazing emotional release to hear we weren’t working in a vacuum. We spent hours just listening to each other. We all stayed in each other’s homes; this was key, people had no money. We would drive through snowstorms. We wanted to stop violence against women. We formed committees; we worked hard. Magic was created.”⁵ 

Early statewide domestic violence coalitions usually had two primary goals: 1) giving intimate partner violence workers, advocates, and survivors across the state a platform for relationship-building and problem-solving, and 2) pushing for a shared policy agenda. For example, PCADV’s early goal was the successful implementation of the Pennsylvania Protection from Abuse Act.

Emerging coalitions around the country took on tasks like “gathering information about existing services, assisting communities that were seeking ways to start non-profits to provide services, identifying allied agencies and organizations that would be good partners and then tasking those people with improving and enhancing services and outcomes for those in danger.”²  

All of these activities—many of which have direct parallels with the movement to address community violence—were designed to improve the services available to victims and survivors by identifying gaps and then taking active steps to fill them through a combination of new relationships, new policies, and new resources.

Initially, this coalition building work was done with little to no public support. “In the first decade, few state coalitions had funding, so they charged a membership fee to allow the coalition to have the resources needed to build and expand the network of services.”² Some coalitions were formally incorporated as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations in order to receive tax-deductible donations from private sources, which also brought along the benefit of additional infrastructure and organizational capacity.

As coalitions continued their vital work, however, more and more decisionmakers recognized their value and started pushing for direct support, including at the federal level, the state level, and through private funding.

Momentum in the movement to address domestic violence reached a new zenith in 1984 when US Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti created the nation’s first Task Force on Family Violence, which issued a landmark report on the scope and impact of domestic violence in the United States.⁴² “Violence in the home strikes at the heart of our society,” the report declared. “To tolerate family violence is to allow the seeds of violence to be sown into the next generation.”⁴³ 

That report prompted Congress to hold a series of hearings in 1984 about how the federal government could best respond to the crisis of domestic violence. After taking testimony throughout the year from advocates, victims, and many other stakeholders, Congress ultimately enacted the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA).⁴⁴  

At the same time that direct services were expanding, statewide domestic violence coalitions continued to proliferate. When FVPSA was reauthorized in 1992, Congress expressly recognized and invested in the expansion of statewide coalitions as part of its strategy to reduce domestic violence. In its present iteration, FVPSA defines state domestic violence coalitions and provides a funding formula for such coalitions in all 50 states and six territories.⁴⁸A “state domestic violence coalition” includes the following characteristics: 

The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is in charge of awarding funding grants to these coalitions, and FVPSA identifies a nonexhaustive list of activities that state domestic violence coalitions can conduct using these funds, including providing educational information to the public; collaborating with entities in fields like housing, law enforcement, and healthcare to develop protocols and policies to address the needs of domestic violence victims; and providing technical assistance and other forms of support to providers of domestic violence services.⁴⁹ 

Of note, these funds cannot be used by state domestic violence coalitions to engage in lobbying activity (actions to influence the outcome of specific legislation). However, there are some critical exceptions, including: 1) when formally requested to do so by a legislative body, or 2) in connection with legislation or appropriations directly affecting the activities of the entity.⁴⁹ This second exception allows coalitions to participate in the policymaking process as it pertains to issues that touch on their broadly-defined functions of improving service delivery to victims of intimate partner violence.

In addition to directly funding coalition activities, FVPSA grants also support the provision of shelters and other direct services for victims. These grants require recipients to make a plan for how they will consult with their designated state and tribal domestic violence coalitions in the administration and distribution of FVPSA funds.⁵⁰ This additional incentive helps solidify a central role of state DV coalitions, which are given pass-through grantmaking responsibility in many states.

Thanks to this ongoing federal support, in a period of just a few decades, America went from a country with almost no domestic violence coalitions to having certified and federally funded state domestic violence coalitions in all 50 states and six territories. Supporting both services and coalition building was an intentional strategy of the federal government, and one that has yielded tremendous success.

In addition to FVPSA, the other major pillar of federal policy is the landmark Violence Against Women Act, which includes direct support for state sexual assault and domestic violence coalitions.

Even with the passage of FVPSA in the 1980s, the growing domestic violence movement recognized a need to engage other sectors, including the many mechanisms of the criminal justice system, from the courts to police practices.⁵¹ With significant effort and sustained advocacy, the movement ultimately persuaded Congress to pass the landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994, which “included the first federal criminal law against battering and a requirement that every state afford full faith and credit to orders of protection issued anywhere in the United States.”⁵¹ 

Substantively, a key difference between VAWA⁵² and FVPSA is that VAWA is focused on legal protections and the criminal justice aspects of intimate partner violence (e.g., VAWA has provisions regarding rape kits and law enforcement grant programs), while FVPSA primarily offers support to shelters and organizations providing direct servies to victims and survivors. VAWA-authorized grant programs are administered by the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW)within the Department of Justice,⁵³ which has awarded more than $6 billion in grants and cooperative agreements to help combat violence against women since its inception in 1995.⁵⁴  

Just as FVPSA provides direct support to statewide DV coalitions, VAWA gives similar support to both domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions, and gives authority to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to designate a sexual assault coalition for each state and territory.⁵⁵ In several states, these two different types of coalitions (DV and SA) have merged into a single entity, such as the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence.⁵⁶  

To support coalition work, OVW administers the State and Territory Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Coalitions Program,⁵⁷ which “provides grants to each state domestic violence coalition (determined by the Department of Health and Human Services) and sexual assault coalition (determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) for the purposes of coordinating victim services activities and collaborating and coordinating with federal, state, and local entities engaged in addressing violence against women.”⁵⁸  

OVW materials describe how coalitions play a critical role in carrying out the goals and mission of VAWA by serving as hubs of coordination that connect local, state, and federal efforts. Historically, these coalition funds, which OVW estimated in 2024 to be more than $18 million for over 80 grantees, have supported activities including technical assistance provision, hiring staff, and identifying and filling gaps in underserved communities.⁵⁹  

In its 2022 biannual report to Congress on the effectiveness of grant programs under the Violence Against Women Act, OVW concluded that coalitions play a number of roles in responding to domestic and sexual violence: “They serve as organizing bodies for local agencies; advocate for policy, legislation, or practice changes; and support collaboration between agencies building community relationships.”⁶⁰ All of these valuable activities help move the field forward and explain the dramatic downward trend in rates of domestic violence in the US over the last few decades.

In addition to the primary coalition support grants of FVPSA and VAWA, a variety of other federal funding sources exist that can and have been used to support intimate partner violence coalitions. This includes victim services grants through the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), discretionary grants from the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention (especially the DELTA AHEAD program, which is specifically designed to support state-level coalitions),⁶¹ and discretionary (i.e., awarded on a competitive basis) grants from programs ranging from VAWA’s Engaging Men in Prevention, Rural Grants, and Transitional Housing programs to the VOCA Assistance Grant program that supports the provision of services to survivors of crime.⁶²  

In recent years, Congress has also resumed what is known as congressionally directed spending, also called “earmarks,” which are projects individually funded in the jurisdictions of individual members of the House and Senate. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, for example, put in a request for $700,000 for the New Jersey Coalition to End Domestic Violence to support the Legal Access Project to improve the provision of legal services to survivors.⁶³ This is one-time, one-year funding that can be subject to tremendous delays as Congress conducts appropriation negotiations, but is still a viable route for obtaining additional support for coalition efforts. 

Taken together, federal support for state coalitions from FVPSA, VAWA, and other federal programs demonstrate a strong federal commitment to the idea that healthy coalitions are an essential part of the national strategy to end intimate partner violence. 

Although federal funds are the single largest source of public funding for state intimate partner violence coalitions, many state governments have directly funded these coalitions as part of a statewide strategy to reduce domestic violence, providing support through grants, programs, and line-item appropriations. In a 2016 national survey, for example, at least 20 state sexual assault coalitions received support directly from state line-items, and 17 reported receiving state funding from various other sources, including victim assistance, criminal justice departments, injury prevention, health departments, training and technical assistance, and state surcharges.⁶²  

Just over a quarter of the annual budget for the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence comes directly from the state,⁶⁴ according to its 2024 Annual Impact Report, while Violence Free Minnesota, that state’s domestic violence coalition, lists the Minnesota Department of Health and Department of Public Safety as directly providing support in the form of grants and contracts.⁶⁵ In California, the Office of Emergency Services posted a noncompetitive grant for its designated statewide domestic violence coalition, the CA Partnership to End Domestic Violence, to support the development of a “domestic violence resource center.”⁶⁶ 

It is beyond the scope of this report to analyze funding levels in all 50 states, but the key point is that states regularly use line-item appropriations, as well as grants and contracts, to directly support the work of statewide domestic violence coalitions.

Even in the best of times, public funding is not a panacea, and it can present significant challenges even as new resources are made available. Federal funding, for example, can be vulnerable to administration changes and subject to serious delays during budget negotiations and the government shutdowns that occur when those negotiations fail. Moreover, public grants are often on a reimbursement basis, which can present a cash flow problem particularly for smaller organizations, and reporting requirements are often onerous.⁶⁷ This is why the CVI movement should seek highly diversified funding streams as it continues to build coalition capacity, including both public and private sources of support. 

Private support for the intimate partner violence movement in the US, although still far from where it needs to be to meet existing demand, has shifted dramatically upward in recent decades—in many ways mirroring and most likely catalyzed by landmark successes on the public policy front, especially the passage of VAWA at the federal level in the early 1990s.

A 2010 report by the Ms. Foundation for Women examined foundation support for gender-based violence issues from 1994 to 2008 and found that “the number of foundations supporting gender-based violence issues increased 143 percent over that time period, while the dollar amount of funding increased three-and-a-half fold,” from $16 million to $80 million.⁶⁸  

This upward trend in private support continued into the 2010s and 2020s. A 2021 report by Inside Philanthropy examined publicly available data and found that, from 2014 to 2018, private funding for abuse prevention and domestic violence shelters averaged $540 million per year.⁶⁹ A 2024 article by Brett J. Barnes, the chief development officer at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, noted that “in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, family and gender-based violence organizations received just $1.3 billion in philanthropic dollars.”⁷⁰  

While those investments, in absolute terms, are incredible increases from earlier years, it’s also important to consider the broader context: Overall philanthropic giving in the US also increased exponentially during that same period. Indeed, as Barnes points out, the $1.3 billion of family and gender-based organizations in 2020 was “less than 1 percent of the $88.55 billion spent in foundation grantmaking that same year.”⁷¹ 

While the majority of private funds have been for on-the-ground services and shelters for victims, domestic violence coalitions have also received increased direct support from private philanthropy. The 2024 Annual Report of the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence, for example, shows that just under 10% of the coalition’s financial support comes from foundations.⁶⁹ Similarly, the 2023–2024 Annual Report of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence shows that 10% of the coalition’s budget comes from private grants.⁷² 

As the above sections have shown, DV coalitions have received direct support in recent decades from a combination of public and private sources, which has fueled the successful development of such coalitions in all 50 states and several US territories. It is the express policy of the federal government and many states to support DV coalitions as a way of improving the overall response to domestic violence. In the context of community violence, although a number of coalitions have begun to form in recent years, there are still many gaps in terms of both public and private support.

Federally, there is not a policy or program for the development of statewide CVI coalitions. The only example of such federal support the GIFFORDS Center for Violence Intervention team is aware of is a one-year, one-time earmark awarded to the Maryland Violence Prevention Coalition (MDVPC) in 2023.⁷³ Similarly, at the state level, we could only identify a single statewide coalition working on CVI issues that receives direct support from its state government.

Private support for CVI that is specific to coalition building efforts is just getting started, with major philanthropies like the Joyce Foundation providing direct support to coalitions in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, but this is the exception rather than the rule. There is tremendous opportunity to increase private support for the CVI field in general, and specifically for coalitions, which are one of the most effective vehicles for building the power and connectivity of the movement for community-based public safety.

America must better support CVI coalition development as part of a broader strategy for reducing community violence in the US. Analyzing domestic violence coalition growth and support helps identify the gaps and opportunities that exist when it comes to community violence coalitions. There are many steps that leaders in the public and private sectors should take to help facilitate the continued development and expansion of CVI coalitions, as outlined below.

As this report has discussed in detail, for several decades now, it has been the policy of the federal government to directly fund and support domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions as part of an overall commitment to reducing domestic violence. This is operationalized through language in the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), both of which provide grants directly to federally-certified state DV and SA coalitions. 

With VAWA, this is done primarily through the State and Territory Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Coalitions Program, administered by the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). For FYPSA, the main mechanism for this support is through the State Domestic Violence Coalitions Formula Grants, administered by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Family Violence Prevention and Services. 

In its 2022 biannual report to Congress regarding the efficacy of VAWA grant programs, OVW staff noted the critical role that coalitions play in improving the nation’s overall response to domestic violence. Federal policy reflects a commitment to supporting coalitions, and several grants in this space require applicants to describe how they will coordinate with the state DV and SA coalition that are formally certified by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Nothing in federal law prevents DOJ leadership from incorporating this support for coalitions into the discretionary funding available through CVIPI, although additional direction and support from Congress would help solidify this policy and demonstrate bipartisan support for the role of community-based solutions and the importance of coalition building when it comes to improving public safety. Future CVIPI grants should also include language encouraging or otherwise incentivizing recipients to collaborate with CVI coalitions in their jurisdiction. 

At the state level, there is also need for states to fund community violence coalitions with line-item appropriations in the same way that many are already funding domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions. In states where CVI coalitions already exist, legislative leaders should consult with coalition members to determine their needs. In states where no such coalition exists, states should provide seed funding to help foster coalition development in the first instance. 

Finally, state and federal leaders can take steps to incentivize private investment in the community violence movement and CVI coalitions. In 2021, the Biden administration, building on historic federal investments in CVI, partnered with more than a dozen national philanthropies to support a network of 14 cities around the county to reduce violence “by deploying CVI experts to provide training and technical assistance, identify best practices, integrate proven and innovative public-health approaches, and help local community-based organizations scale CVI efforts this summer and beyond.”⁷⁶ Among this group of private funders were philanthropic organizations like Arnold Ventures, the California Endowment, and Annie E. Casey Foundation, as well as corporate entities like Microsoft. Recent results from that group of cities receiving a combination of federally-induced private/public support includes the following:

By making support for CVI coalitions a specific and intentional policy to help reduce levels of homicides and shootings, American policymakers at all levels of government can help improve public safety and incentivize further support from the private sector on this issue, which is discussed in the next recommendation. 

The recommendation for private funders is simple: Invest more in CVI as part of a broader strategy to improve the health of American communities. As discussed in detail in this report, in most parts of the country, private funding for community-based solutions to violence lag far behind what is necessary to see transformational gains to public safety. In some cases, private donors may be hesitant because of the political nature of the national gun violence debate, but CVI strategies offer a safe haven: They in no way involve the regulation of guns and completely bypass the politically charged and polemic Second Amendment debate. 

For funders new to this issue, the National CVI Action Plan was written with input from dozens of CVI organizations around the country and with the funding community as a primary audience. It provides an excellent starting place to understand the state of the CVI field and areas where investments are likely to have the greatest impact.⁷⁵ Another helpful starting point is Inside Philanthropy’s 2024 report The State of American Philanthropy: Giving for Violence Prevention.⁶⁹ Given the importance of safety to the thriving of local economies and the ability to attract new businesses, this is an investment that should be attractive to business leaders around the country. CVI strategies give private funders a unique way to take an effective stand on this issue. 

A few recent developments show how private philanthropy may engage more deeply and effectively when it comes to addressing community violence. In Chicago, the philanthropic community organized itself in 2016 with a mission to work collectively “to identify and support community-led, evidence-based solutions that the public sector can scale as part of a comprehensive approach to addressing gun violence.”⁸² That effort, known as the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities (PSPC), has grown to include more than 50 foundations and funders, and has committed more than $140 million over a seven-year period (2017 to 2024) to reduce gun violence in Chicago.⁸² An important feature of this investment is the long-term nature of the commitment, which has gained momentum and scope over time.

The business community of Chicago has also organized itself around a similar set of goals. The leaders of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, whose members include the city’s largest companies, launched the Public Safety Task Force in October 2022. This group worked with consultants over an 18-month period to develop a comprehensive and ambitious strategy for significantly reducing homicides and shootings in Chicago over the next 10 years, with a $400 million fundraising goal. 

Between PSPC, SC2, and the Public Safety Taskforce, Chicago has created several vehicles for long-term investment in community-based public safety infrastructure that has helped to also attract public support. Part of this was an intentional commitment on the part of investors to build out the evidence base for CVI work with rigorous, research-based evaluation, including influential work done by the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.⁸⁵ That “proof of concept” is what helped to win public sector and business sector buy-in, by making the case that this is a sound investment.

As the SC2 semi-annual report states, “A growing body of research suggests that CVI in Chicago is highly effective in reducing the risk factors among individuals most impacted by violence. Initial independent evaluations of three citywide CVI programs by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and Northwestern University CORNERS have shown promising evidence of impact: READI Chicago participants have 79% fewer arrests for a shooting or homicide; Chicago CRED participants have experienced a 50% reduction in victimization and are 73% less likely to be re-arrested for violent crime; and Communities Partnering 4 Peace (CP4P) outreach participants have 31% fewer gunshot injuries in the following 24 months.”⁸⁶ 

Chicago provides a striking example of the power of private investment to attract public resources to a particular issue, which in turn helps drive additional private support, creating a virtuous cycle. The below chart shows the breakdown of public and private funding for CVI in Chicago from 2018 to 2024, and it demonstrates how private support has helped drive an increase in public investment—and how both have increased in absolute terms since 2018, although the public increase is much more dramatic in scope. 

Through this dynamic, private investments of $150 million have attracted more than $300 million in public funding to Chicago to address homicides and shootings in recent years.⁸⁷ As a 2022 article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy described, thanks to this combined public-private funding, “Chicago’s decades-old violence-intervention field is enjoying a stability it could only imagine previously.”⁸⁷ At the end of 2024, the city saw homicides decline to a half-decade low as these investments reached the ground and took effect.⁸⁸  

CVI and violence prevention advocates and practitioners at all levels of government should add direct support for coalitions to their list of policy priorities, and push both public and private stakeholders to increase their support for CVI coalition building efforts. 

When determining how much funding to push for in a state’s given fiscal year, support for coalition work should be factored in the equation. Using the information in this report, advocates and practitioners can help lawmakers understand that this investment might be new in the CVI field, but has been a tried-and-true investment in the related field of domestic violence prevention—and one that has proved its worth over decades. Extending this support to CVI coalitions is simply a natural extension of that policy and helps to fill an important gap when it comes to addressing community violence.

Advocates and practitioners should also seek out and join CVI coalitions where they already exist and continue to educate lawmakers on the vital role that coalitions play in improving the efficacy of the field. For federal advocates, this means joining the Invest in Us coalition.

For state-level advocates, a new resource is the State CVI Coalition Alliance (SCCA), which is a voluntary membership organization of individuals who lead state CVI coalitions. As a “coalition of coalitions,” SCCA’s mission is to foster coalition growth by building networks, sharing best practices and lessons learned, and creating informational materials for public consumption. To find out if there is a state CVI coalition in your home state, you can contact the SCCA at sccainformation@gmail.com.

If there is not a CVI coalition in your state and/or region, it’s time to think about getting one started. This is a time-intensive and relationship-driven process that depends on high levels of trust between members. Yet the potential results more than justify the costs, as this report has demonstrated. The SCCA has a number of resources available upon request about the coalition building process, and GIFFORDS Center for Violence Intervention is working on detailed guidance about how to start and maintain a state CVI coalition.

The ultimate takeaway of this report is simple, yet powerful: The experiences of the domestic violence movement and many others in the US show definitively that coalitions are one of the most important drivers of social change. Over the last few decades, as the domestic violence movement grew, many levels of government and the private sector intentionally included support for coalitions as part of an intentional strategy to reduce intimate partner violence. As a result, such coalitions now exist in every single state—and as this movement has grown, overall levels of domestic violence have dropped significantly: down 67% from the early 1990s to the early 2020s.¹⁰ 

The movement to end community violence is starting down a similar path, with coalitions beginning to emerge at the local, state, and federal levels, although this has largely not been part of any intentional or strategic public policy choice.

It’s time for that to change. The success of coalitions like the Invest in Us coalition at the national level and the CalVIP Coalition at the state level demonstrate the utility and impact of CVI coalitions beyond a shadow of a doubt. Continuing the forward momentum will require intentional investment and support on the part of all levels of government and the private sector, just as it has in the domestic violence space. 

After several years of significant progress on the issue of community violence, with double digit reductions in homicide levels during the final years of the Biden administration, the federal government now appears ready to turn its back on CVI. In short, there is little reason to think that the Trump administration will support the growth of CVI coalitions. 

Nevertheless, the rest of the nation must lean in to protect this lifesaving work, or risk undoing many years’ worth of effort and progress. This is the right public policy—and we at GIFFORDS Center for Violence Intervention will continue calling on national leaders to do the right thing until they either act, or until America elects a new set of leaders willing to do what it takes to save lives. 

In the meantime, progress is still possible at the state level. Now more than ever, local leaders and the private sector must rise to the occasion as the stewards of community-based public safety. 

Every sector has a role to play. GIFFORDS Center for Violence Intervention is supporting the growth of CVI coalitions through our advocacy and organizing efforts, but also with the creation of the State CVI Coalition Alliance (SCCA), which is a platform for coalition leaders to discuss challenges, share information, and continue to build organizing and advocacy capacity for the community-based public safety movement. For more information, please contact us at sccainformation@gmail.com.

We would like to acknowledge and thank everyone who contributed to this report, and to extend a special thank you to those in the movement to end domestic violence and sexual assault who contributed their thoughts and partnership.