Joyful Heart’s work advocating for national rape kit reform is driven by the ambitious goal to bring the possibility of healing and justice to hundreds of thousands of survivors across the country.

With your support, we have taken historic steps forward this year—from the $76 million in funding we helped secure to address the rape kit backlog nationwide, to the launch of The Accountability Project, our initiative to uncover the extent of the rape kit backlog in cities across the country.

Your gift today helps us harness the momentum around this issue and engage cities, states and the federal government in efforts to bring real and lasting reform. Our June 30 deadline is fast approaching—and we need to raise $180,249 to meet our goal.

Joyful Heart’s efforts to end the backlog have taken us to the halls of Congress, where our Managing Director, Sarah Haacke Byrd, testified before a U.S. Senate Committee hearing, "Taking Sexual Assault Seriously: The Rape Kit Backlog and Human Rights." Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives included $45 million to address the nation’s rape kit backlog in the FY16 spending bill. Our work has also been the subject of hundreds of news stories as The Accountability Project released new information showing 9,000 untested kits in five large U.S. cities.

We are committed to working with every interested partner, from city and state governments, law enforcement and prosecutors to crime labs, advocates and survivors to enact reforms that will end the backlog of untested rape kits for good. We need your help to meet our June 30 fundraising deadline—just 6 days away. Your support today will help us bring healing and justice to survivors. The stakes could not be higher.

With gratitude,

Chief Executive Officer
Joyful Heart Foundation