Minnesota Freedom Fund will no longer pay pretrial bail and bond for jailed defendants

The Minnesota Freedom Fund is moving away from its mission of directly posting bail and bond to get people out of jail before trial.

The nonprofit gained national recognition after George Floyd’s murder when it agreed to pay bail for anyone arrested for protesting the killing. More than $40 million in donations poured in from around the world.

In a Wednesday email to partners of the fund, executive director Elizer Darris announced a “shift” in how the nonprofit will focus its work.

“We have come to a hard truth,” Darris wrote. “We cannot bail and bond our way out of the harmful systems of pretrial detention and immigration detention.”

He noted that the fund has helped thousands of individuals and families. Of the $42 million in donations the organization has accepted in nine years, more than $33 million was invested “directly into freeing people from cages and resourcing organizations in the fight for racial justice.”

Publicly filed tax documents show that the fund has been rapidly losing money.

For years, it operated with marginal notice after being started in 2016 by University of Minnesota student Simon Cecil, who was inspired by similar movements to try to improve the cash bail system across the United States. Cecil would post low-level bonds for people being held in jail in Minnesota. All he asked in return was that the defendant show up for their next court date.

Total contributions to the fund from 2017-2019 were just shy of $400,000.

In 2020, after protests erupted in reaction to the police killing of Floyd, the fund came to national attention when future Vice President Kamala Harris posted a link to the website on her social media account.

“If you’re able to, chip in now,” she wrote, “for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”

The fund raised $41.7 million. In the years since, the fund has continued to spend millions while bringing in smaller contributions.

From 2021-2023, the last year of available tax documents, contributions totaled $1.3 million while expenses totaled $16.4 million. Net assets have gone from $34.6 million to $17.9 million.

In that time it also became a lightning rod for conservative critics who pointed to cases in which the organization posted bail for people who went on to reoffend. The Freedom Fund countered that those instances were rare compared to the large number of people released before trial.

Noble Frank, the fund’s communications director, said this change was fiscal and philosophical and had nothing to do with political battles.

“We are no stranger to the Trump administration,” she said. “We have never backed down from those fights and this is not about how we can make our organization smaller or safer from criticism. We want to make ourselves bigger and louder and more effective.”

The surge in contributions in 2020 dramatically altered the fund, but it hasn’t been sustainable.

Tax filings show the nonprofit has paid millions to get defendants out of jail. That included 2,264 people being held on criminal charges and 463 being held by immigration from 2020-2023.

In that same time period, the fund paid $4.8 million in bail forfeitures for clients who didn’t show up to court. Unlike for-profit bond companies, the fund had no insurance backing and paid full cash bail. It also turned into a larger operation. In 2023, four directors earned more than $100,000 in total compensation — including $233,668 for Darris and $332,628 for former co-executive director Mirella Ceja Orozco.

While noting that the fund is going to continue fighting pretrial and immigration detention, Darris wrote that it will now focus that energy on advocacy, community education and “fighting for transformative change.”

But for a nonprofit that has formerly incarcerated staff members at every level of its organization and deep roots with other organizations fighting to keep people out of jail, it was not easy.

“The reality is this shift will mean more people jailed pretrial this year in the areas we serve. We recognize the impact on those individuals on their families,” Frank said. “That’s an impact that weighs very heavily on our organization and staff.”

Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Mike Berger said in a statement that he knew this was a difficult decision for the fund and its staff. Berger wrote that it will have “a negative effect for many of our clients,” but he understood the decision.

“Simply paying bail for indigent individuals is only a band-aid on a deeply flawed system of pre-trial release,” Berger said. “Our office will push forward — every day — to argue for our clients’ release; to argue the disparities imposed on those incarcerated pre-trial; and argue against a deeply flawed two-tier bail system in Minnesota."

The fund will stop paying pretrial bail and bonds on June 1 and then reexamine its effects and sustainability after one year.

“We’re proud of the impact our organization has had,” Darris wrote. “And we want to ensure that we’re positioned to support our community until we end pretrial and immigration detention.”

While recognizing the financial realities the nonprofit is operating under, Darris also wrote that, “Our goal is not to sustain our organization indefinitely. It is to put ourselves out of business once and for all by ending the systems we were created to address.”