💸 All Square gets windfall grant

All Square, the grilled cheese restaurant and criminal justice reform nonprofit on 41st and Minnehaha, was recently one of several local groups to receive a hefty gift from Seattle billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. 

The $2 million grant is almost as much as All Square’s entire budget last year, and comes with virtually no strings attached: No reporting, no restrictions on how it can be used.  It’s part of a sustained giving spree by Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, that has included more than $129 million to 34 nonprofits in Minnesota in the past four years, according to the Star Tribune. 

The money will help sustain All Sqaure's rapid growth from a small grilled cheese restaurant employing formerly incarcerated people to an influential criminal justice reform advocate connecting incarcerated people to legal training, and running a law firm of its own.

Background

Founded in 2016 by civil rights attorney Emily Hunt Turner, All Square started as a small-scale effort to chip away at some of the barriers facing people after incarceration (and who, as the name suggests, the group considers "all square" on their debt to society.)