Campaign for Justice has achieved fundraising goal

The Campaign for Justice fundraising campaign officially wraps up March 31, but the effort has already reached the goal of $265,000.

A celebration for supporters of the Campaign for Justice, sponsored in part by The Daily Record, will be held April 25 at the Telesca Center for Justice.

The Campaign for Justice has been a hallmark of the Rochester legal community since its inception in 1986, raising roughly a quarter of a million dollars annually.

Tina Foster

“Each year, we continue to be impressed by the generosity of this community in supporting access to justice,” said Tina Foster, executive director at JustCause, one of the civil legal service agencies that benefit from the fundraising campaign.

Money raised in the Campaign for Justice supports the four civil legal service organizations based in the Telesca Center for Justice: Empire Justice Center; JustCause; the Legal Aid Society of Rochester; and Legal Assistance of Western New York (LawNY).

“The Campaign for Justice in the past has been run by JustCause while supporting the Legal Aid Society of Rochester, LawNY, as well as JustCause,” said Krystal Bertrand, the development officer hired to lead the campaign.

Bertrand

“New this year we’ve added Empire Justice Center, so it now includes all four of the civil legal service providers within the Telesca Center,” Bertrand said.

“They’ve pooled their individual and corporate fundraising efforts into this initiative moving forward,” she said.

“Each of their grant work will stay within those four organizations, but their individual and corporate fundraising within Monroe County will be housed within my role and the campaign,” said Bertrand, who was hired in October to focus on fundraising.

Bertrand previously worked for the Rochester/Monroe County Domestic Violence Consortium.

“That’s kind of where I started my non-profit work and helped coordinate the effort of the service providers or the domestic violence service providers throughout Rochester for a few years,” she said.

From there, Bertrand joined the team at the Legal Aid Society of Rochester handling grant management, writing and administrative tasks.

She was the director of grants and grants officer for the Willow Domestic Violence Center of Greater Rochester for about 18 months before taking the role of Campaign for Justice development officer.

Lori M. O’Brien

“We’re thrilled to have Krystal on board to lead this joint fundraising initiative into the future and deepen our capacity for raising much needed unrestricted funding,” said Lori O’Brien, deputy director at LawNY.

“This will increase our ability to meet emerging legal needs and assist clients seeking access to justice regardless of whether they fit into a particular funding stream,” she said.

Bertrand said there will be a transition from the annual Campaign for Justice, “which has been a short form kind of peer-to-peer fundraising model, to a full annual development strategy.”

[email protected] / (585) 232-2035