BayLegal Launches Our 2022 Annual Fund Campaign
This week, BayLegal launches the public phase of our 2022 Partners In Justice Annual Campaign, and invites our readers and social media followers to renew your commitments as donors—or to make this commitment for the first time. In previous years, BayLegal has launched the public campaign between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays. This year, the conjunction of urgent need and new opportunity leads us to launch the campaign early in order to make the most of an unanticipated outpouring of early generosity.
The need is urgent because, after successfully helping thousands of clients navigate the huge legal challenges in 2020 and 2021, we now face the reality of the “post-pandemic” era for legal services: a court system overwhelmed by consumer debt collections suits in which the great majority of defendants have no legal representation, and the great majority of unrepresented litigants lose. A rising tide of eviction and displacement following the income loss and insecurity of the pandemic. Growing exposure to violence, disconnection from systems of support, and threats to basic healthcare access.
We cannot risk allowing the consequences of the pandemic to become permanent, and to harden and deepen the civil legal system’s existing, long-standing inequities around race and wealth. The Partners In Justice campaign is a key part of a resource strategy that allows BayLegal to succeed again and again on behalf of individual clients, as seen in our 2021 Annual Report and in more recent news, along with our effective litigation and advocacy strategies that help to advance systemic change on behalf of low-income individuals and communities.
Our opportunity this year is as clear as the need is urgent: Early gifts to the Partners In Justice Campaign by an anonymous $100,000 donor and other major contributors, and an early outpouring of generosity by donors making smaller but significant gifts—many for the first time—have put the individual donor portion of the campaign past the halfway mark before November for the first time ever. Meanwhile, support from our law firm donors is on pace to exceed last year’s nearly unprecedented level of support from the private bar. We have momentum on our side. And we have you, our partners, supporters, and readers. We invite you to join this outpouring of support: help us put the 2022 Partners In Justice campaign over the top before the end of the year, and help ensure the resources for stability, flexibility, and strength in our advocacy into 2023.
Thanks to those who have started the ball rolling, and put the 2022 campaign in such strong position so early in the year!
2022 Individual Major Donors
Anonymous
Arthur & Charlotte Zitrin Foundation
Benjamin Spero
Beth Sawi, in memory of David Sawi
Joel Linzner
2022 Law Firm, Legal Sector and Corporate Donors
The Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Foundation ($125,000 lead gift to the campaign)
Covington & Burling LLP
Fenwick & West, LLP
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP
NVIDIA
Ontra
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton
Silicon Valley Campaign for Legal Services
Finally, a special thanks to our leadership-level individual and organizational donors from the 2021 Partners In Justice campaign, whose generous commitments have helped to sustain and deepen our work through 2021!
2021 Individual Leading Donors
John Dwyer
Fred Feller
William & Marianne Gagen
Robert Goodin
Christopher Hockett
David McClain
Ashok Ramani
Toni Rembe
Arthur Rock
Allan Steyer
Joseph J. Tabacco, Jr.
Robert Van Nest
2021 Law Firm, Legal Sector and Corporate Leading Donors
Cooley LLP
Kazan McClain Partners’ Foundation
Morrison & Foerster Foundation
The Ottinger Firm P.C.
Setareh Law Group
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Foundation