The Impact Fund

The Fund also provides training for lawyers and activists on how to use individual and class-action lawsuits to advance a left-progressive agenda – an approach which the Fund calls “impact litigation.” The Fund explicitly states that it engages in legal action “with the goal of achieving broad social change.” ¹

Background

The Impact Fund was founded in 1992 by career civil rights attorney Brad Seligman, who went on to become a judge on the California Superior Court for the County of Alameda. Seligman recruited several of the state’s leading left-of-center activist litigators to become the Fund’s original Board of Advisors. The Fund is now headquartered in Berkeley, California. ¹

Initiatives

The Impact Fund issues grants to numerous smaller legal activist organizations with a left-progressive agenda. In 2020, the Fund gave grants of between $7,500 and $50,000 to at least 20 such groups. These included a transgender legal center in California, which received $50,000; an environmentalist legal center in New Mexico, which received $35,000; and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading firearm rights restriction advocacy group, which also received $50,000. The Fund also sent $27,500 to two undisclosed recipients outside the United States for “program support.” In total, the Fund distributed more than $570,000 worth of grants and other financial support. ²

That year, the Fund also joined several high-profile lawsuits related to LGBT issues, including one involving a male Starbucks employee who sued the company for not recognizing his self-identification as female. Another involved a female high school student who identified as male. The Fund was also involved in a lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture which was intended to overrule the federal government and extend welfare benefits in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. ³

Leadership

Jocelyn Larkin is the executive director of the Impact Fund. She has served as class counsel in numerous class-action lawsuits against major corporations such as Walmart and Costco. Larkin attended the University of California, Los Angeles law school. ⁴

Teddy Basham-Witherington is the deputy director of the Impact Fund. He has an extensive track record in organizing activism for same-sex and transgender issues, most recently as the chief marketing officer for the LGBT activist group Out and Equal Employment Advocates. He previously spent more than a decade organizing LGBT parades in San Francisco and London. ⁴

David Nahmias is the staff attorney at the Impact Fund. He started out as a law fellow at the Fund, and during that time, he oversaw the launch of its LGBT activist litigation effort. He previously worked for several other left-of-center legal activist organizations, including California Rural Legal Assistance and Legal Aid at Work. He also interned for the office of California-based federal judge Charles Breyer. Nahmias attended the University of California, Berkeley law school, where he was an editor at two of the university’s law journals. ⁴

Finances

In 2020, the Impact Fund received more than $1.1 million in contributions and grants. The Fund also received a loan of more than $170,000 through the Paycheck Protection Program, which was part of the federal economic stimulus package intended to offset the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. ² Notable donors to the Fund in 2020 included the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the Pisces Foundation. ⁵