Texas After Violence Project: Creating an Educational Institute

The Texas After Violence Project is a public memory archive that fosters deeper understandings of the impacts of state-sponsored violence by building power with directly impacted communities and centering their dignity, agency, and expertise to cultivate restorative and transformative justice. As they struggled to obtain sustainable funding, they looked to diversify and expand the organization’s income – growing beyond a single grant from a family foundation to independent revenue generation streams. 

With a grant from Progressive Multiplier, the Texas After Violence Project developed fee-based online continuing education courses for those working in transformative justice, including attorneys, mental health professionals, social workers, educators, advocates, activists, memory care providers, and others interested in ending cycles of violence and trauma.

They launched a pilot marketing effort to promote the courses, using segmented email, print and digital ads, and physical mailings. This effort allowed them to establish a baseline budget needed to reach each audience in the next fiscal year. 

As a result of the initial marketing test, the Texas After Violence Project received more than 200 enrollments in its courses. They project a 2:1 return on their marketing spend in class registration fees. 

Texas After Violence is dedicated to the telling, preserving, and sharing personal experiences of people harmed by the criminal legal system while always honoring the agency, dignity, and narrative power of every directly impacted person. This work takes many forms, although the archive's core is video-based oral history interviews.