Kentucky Bar Foundation Launches New $50,000 Signature Justice Grant
The Kentucky Bar Foundation (KBF) is launching a new $50,000 Signature Justice Grant to support bold, innovative projects that create lasting improvements in access to justice and legal education in Kentucky. The Signature Justice Grant is an additional investment separate from KBF’s annual grant program. It is designed to complement, rather than replace, the Foundation’s broad annual grantmaking, which supports organizations addressing a wide range of access-to-justice and legal education needs across Kentucky.
The competitive grant is designed to help organizations launch new initiatives or substantially expand existing projects with the potential for significant, lasting impact. KBF is seeking projects that address unmet needs, demonstrate innovation, and can be sustained beyond the Foundation’s initial investment.
“Our goal is not simply to fund a project,” said Susan Hanley Duncan, KBF Executive Director. “It is to help launch something that can continue to grow, serve more people, and become a model for Kentucky.”
George Meng, a contributor to the Signature Justice Fund, said the grant offers organizations an opportunity to pursue ideas that might otherwise be difficult to undertake.
“I was pleased to help fund the Kentucky Bar Foundation’s new $50,000 Signature Justice Grant. My hope is that the size of the grant will give an organization the opportunity to try something it might not otherwise have been able to do, something innovative that addresses a real need and, if successful, can continue and perhaps be replicated elsewhere in Kentucky.”
Projects considered for funding may include expanding legal services into underserved communities, developing technology that increases access to legal assistance, creating self-help resources, launching mobile legal clinics, purchasing equipment essential to a project, supporting staffing directly tied to an initiative, and developing collaborative projects involving multiple organizations.
The Foundation is particularly interested in projects that can create measurable improvements in access to justice or legal education, benefit a substantial number of Kentuckians, or create a model that could be replicated elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Applicants will be evaluated on transformative impact, innovation, community need, organizational capacity, sustainability, budget, measurable outcomes, and collaboration.
Applications for the 2027 Signature Justice Grant cycle will open October 1, 2026. The current application deadline is February 12, 2027. One $50,000 grant will be awarded on June 4, 2027.
