John,

Our new fiscal year just started this month, and that may sound like some arbitrary date, but it’s very real for us.

It means that we’re having big conversations about exactly what we want to accomplish this year. We’re talking through our organizational goals, the strategies and tactics we need to implement to reach those goals, and how we need to allocate resources accordingly. So it’s an incredibly crucial point in the year for the Innocence Project.

That’s why we’re setting a goal of raising $25,000 online by the end of this month, so we’ll be able to carry out everything we have planned for this fiscal year. Will you help us get there by making a donation right now?

In the last fiscal year alone, we achieved so much together. Ron Jacobsen, Philip Barnett, Muhammad A. Aziz, and Khalil Islam were all exonerated after decades of being wrongly convicted; Barry Jacobson’s conviction was vacated; Pervis Payne narrowly escaped execution and now has a chance to be freed on parole; and we passed 10 reforms in eight states.

These are all major accomplishments, and we’re proud of this work, but we know this is only the beginning. We want to build on all of this and go even bigger in this new fiscal year — but we can’t do that without support from this community.

And that’s where you come in. We’re asking you to make a donation of whatever you can to help us reach our $25,000 new-fiscal-year goal.

Thank you so much for your support,

— The Innocence Project Team