Appleseed Foundation

Appleseed

Type	Non-Partisan
Founded	1993
Location	727 15th Street, NW 11th Floor Washington D.C. 20005
Motto	Sowing the Seeds of Justice.
Website	www.appleseednetwork.org

Appleseed (The Appleseed Foundation Inc.) is a non-partisan, nonprofit network of 16 public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico.

History

Appleseed was founded in 1993 by members of Harvard Law School’s class of 1958 at their 35th reunion. As founding member Richard Medalie reported to his classmates:

Members of our Class voted to establish a Class of 1958 sponsored and funded foundation to help organize, establish, and guide state centers for law in the public interest throughout the country. We have called the entity formed to carry on this program Appleseed because our concept is to plant a seed from which a public service activity involving lawyers, young and old, can grow and develop across the country.

From the outset Appleseed was framed around what was then a singular approach to pro bono law. Its strategy was to address issues that lent themselves to system-wide reform rather than the traditional model of providing legal services to individuals with legal problems. While litigation is one tool used by some of the Appleseed Centers, the organization tends to focus on achieving structural changes through market-based reforms, policy analysis and research, legislation, and rule making. Its board is no longer limited to its founders, and its reach, partners and methods extend beyond the law and lawyers.

Betsy Cavendish is the Executive Director. She succeeded Linda Singer, who guided Appleseed for 13 years prior to becoming Attorney General of the District of Columbia. Appleseed has a large and prestigious board of directors, composed of prominent members of the bar, businesses, other nonprofits, representatives from the Centers, and founding members. The current co-chairs are Stephen Gates of Mayer Brown and Timothy Mayopoulos of Fannie Mae.

Structure

National

Appleseed’s national office (referred to as “Appleseed”) is based in Washington, D.C. It relies on professionals to volunteer their services so that every dollar in the budget can be leveraged into four dollars of pro bono service.

Appleseed helps promote Center work, serves as a clearinghouse of projects and project successes, and provides training and technical assistance, particularly in communications, development, project management and board development, as well as in the substantive areas of education, immigration, financial access, health care and hurricane recovery.

Appleseed Centers

Appleseed's 16 Centers function as independent organizations linked to each other and with the national organization. They have achieved enduring accomplishment in areas ranging from children’s welfare, education reform, criminal justice reform, juvenile justice, electoral reform, judicial independence, access to health care, immigrant justice, housing development, teacher recruitment, government accountability, and the integration of environmentalism and community development.

Appleseed currently has Centers in Alabama, Chicago, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and Mexico, and an office doing project work in New York City. In addition, Appleseed projects are on the ground in several other states without Centers.

Accomplishments

Appleseed chronicles new accomplishments of the network through weekly e-newsletters called Appleseed This Week.

Sample Local Accomplishments

• Alabama Appleseed was a key participant in drafting and securing passage of a modern, comprehensive residential landlord/tenant law for the state, which replaced antiquated laws on landlord/tenant relations. The new law established rights related to habitability, security deposits, landlord retaliation and evictions. Alabama Appleseed also works to remove structural barriers that affect the quality of life of immigrants. Alabama Appleseed Legal Director Shay Farley recently spoke out against the Alabama HB 56 anti-illegal immigration law. In its complaint, Alabama Appleseed argues that the law would unjustly prevent the organization from transporting illegal aliens throughout the state.

• Chicago Appleseed was the first lawyer’s organization to call for a death penalty moratorium in Illinois, in response to concerns about the state’s flawed capital punishment process. Chicago Appleseed’s recommendations were adopted by the governor’s commission and became part of substantial reforms, which in turn sparked a reconsideration of the death penalty in states across the country.

• Connecticut Appleseed helped ensure the inclusion of $20 million in the state's budget to motivate dentists to increase access to oral health care for Medicaid children, a victory that culminated more than three years of collaborative work and helped resolve a six-year impasse in the State Legislature.

• DC Appleseed has released several editions of its lauded report reviewing the District government’s response to HIV/AIDS. Top officials in Washington, D.C., have hailed the report as a "blueprint for change." The DC Center also helped launch a community college in the District of Columbia and undertook a review of the qualifications, method of selection, and role of the District’s Attorney General.

• Georgia Appleseed embarked on the largest and most ambitious pro bono project ever undertaken in the state—a comprehensive rewrite of the state’s Juvenile Justice Code, the first time any state has drafted a comprehensive "model" juvenile code. More than 130 attorneys have signed on to work on the project.

• Kansas Appleseed successfully advocated for a tuition waiver that will allow foster children to enter the state’s public universities. (2007)

• Louisiana Appleseed brought attention to "heirship property" – property without a clear title – which led the Louisiana Senate to create and approve a bill to enact an Appleseed-led committee to study and develop recommendations for the state Legislature. Also, through its immigrant financial access project, Louisiana Appleseed is helping local banks and credit unions to better reach unbanked or underbanked members of the Latino community.

• Massachusetts Appleseed successfully advocated for passage of an open adoption law that provides a much-needed statutory framework for agreements permitting a biological parent to have continued contact with an adopted child, and launched a legal assistance program for low-income families encountering legal barriers while attempting to adopt foster children. The Massachusetts Center is also examining ways to prevent students from dropping out of school and working to ensure fairness in state trial courts.

• Mexico Appleseed is part of a coalition that successfully reformed the criminal trial system in Mexico, to provide for oral trials rather than to rely only on a written record without oral testimony, or to give the defendant the opportunity to appear in court. Mexico Appleseed is playing a key role in developing a pro bono culture in Mexico and has enrolled over 100 firms eager to provide pro bono service.

• Nebraska Appleseed won a groundbreaking appeal in the United States Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of more than 10,000 single parents, that regained more than $18 million in health care benefits for otherwise uninsured Nebraskans. The Nebraska Center also recently achieved improvements in the school lunch system to relieve childhood hunger.

• New Jersey Appleseed obtained a court order that reversed a gag order on state troopers who speak out about racial profiling of minority motorists. They also filed and won a lawsuit charging discrimination against African American state troopers. More recently, the Center has been fighting cuts in New Jersey’s State Children's Health Insurance Program.

• New Mexico Appleseed has been advocating for improvements in the state free/reduced lunch system, a fairer distribution of resources between schools in poorer and wealthier neighborhoods and greater parental involvement as they key to better education.

• South Carolina Appleseed has been a leader in the state’s passage of a number of economic opportunity reforms including passage of the state’s Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the South Carolina High Cost Mortgage and Consumer Home Loan Act. It has also developed an initiative called “Focus on Kids” by bringing together more than 65 partner organizations that work on behalf of children's issues

• Texas Appleseed led the coalition to draft and pass the Fair Defense Act, which fundamentally changed the way lawyers are appointed for low-income criminal defendants in Texas, and led to local reforms to create special appointment mechanisms and practices for defendants with mental illness. The bill was hailed as the most important legislative reform in America in the last 25 years. The Texas Center has also been fighting to keep kids out of prison, limit predatory lending practices and reform the immigration court system. Recently, the Dallas Observer ran a story about Texas Appleseed's effort to end harsh discipline policies in public schools, such as the issuance of tickets to students in school. Wilonsky, Robert. Kicking the Class C Ticket Out of Classrooms.Dallas Observer, 2011.

• Washington Appleseed is working to connect King County and Seattle low-income and working people with the services they need to achieve their financial goals. The Center has also produced pamphlets on the legal rights of people living with multiple sclerosis and the rights of patients with craniofacial medical conditions.

Sample Publications

Reports

Appleseed has published a number of reports, summarizing the results of its policy analysis and making policy recommendations, for policy makers and the public.

• Due Process and Consumer Debt: Eliminating Barriers to Justice in Consumer Credit Cases (March 2010)
• Protecting Assets and Child Custody in the Face of Deportation (December 2009)
• Assembly Line Injustice: Blueprint to Reform America's Immigration Court System (June 2009)
• The Value of a Credit Score: Developing an Equitable Model for the Use of Credit Histories in Financially Underserved Communities (February 2009)
• Remittance Transparency: Strengthening Business, Building Community (February 2009)
• Immigrant Use of Financial Services and Unmet Needs: A Survey of Mexican Immigrants in Chicago (December 2008)
• Forcing Our Blues Into Gray Areas: Local Police and Federal Immigration Enforcement (May 2008)
• It Takes A North Carolina Parent: Transforming Education Under the No Child Left Behind Act (May 2008)
• Banking in a Global Market: A Financial Institution Guide for Offering International Remittance Services (January 2008)
• The Fair Exchange: Improving the Market for International Remittances (April 2007)
• It Takes a Parent: Transforming Education in the Wake of the No Child Left Behind Act (September 2006)
• A Continuing Storm: The On-Going Needs of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees (August 2006)
• Keeping Afloat: Eligibility, Employer Attitudes, and Barriers to Public Benefits for Small Business Employees (August 2006)
• Helping Small Business Employees Access Affordable Health Care: Recommendations for a State-Level Response (July 2006)
• Expanding Immigrant Access to Mainstream Financial Services (June 2006)
• Banking Immigrant Communities: A Toolkit for Banks and Credit Unions (February 2006)
• Creating a Fair Playing Field for Consumers: The Need for Transparency in the U.S.-Mexico Remittance Market (December 2005)
• The Database Dilemma: Implementation of HAVA’s Statewide Vote Registration Database Requirement (November 2005)
• A Guide for Non-profit Organizations Seeking to Connect Immigrant Communities with Mainstream Financial Institutions (May 2004)
• Need Space? School-Facility Public-Private Partnerships: An Assessment of Alternative Financing Arrangements (May 2004)

Other Publications

• Understanding Prepaid Card Partnerships: A Guide for Nonprofit Organizations in New York (June 2010)
• New York City Teacher Recruitment Ads (June 2005)
• “Bank on Your Future”/“Su Dinero, Su Familia, Y Su Futuro” Financial Access Brochures (January 2005)

External links

• Appleseed
• 2009 Annual Report
• Appleseed Center Accomplishments
• List of Publications