Rooted in the Work is a dignity-based infrastructure designed to support people healing from incarceration and systemic harm. Our work is grounded in restorative living, not as a program or policy, but as a daily practice of care, accountability, creativity, and shared responsibility. We formalize what communities have always done instinctively: taking care of each other. Rooted in the Work exists to turn that care into something sustainable, scalable, and life-giving.

Restorative living means organizing our lives, work, and resources in ways that prioritize dignity over punishment, care over control, and sustainability over crisis response. It is not a workshop or a checklist. It is how we show up every day, how we make decisions, move money, share power, and stay accountable to one another and ourselves.

Rooted in the Work operates as a values-led LLC by design. This structure allows us to move quickly, remain accountable, pay people fairly, and avoid the constraints that often limit innovation and dignity within traditional nonprofit systems. It also reflects our belief that care, culture, and economic agency do not need to be separated.

Hope is Dope is the cultural and economic system that holds and scales this work. It is not a slogan, it is a structure. Hope is Dope moves money through people rather than extracting value from them. It creates pathways for joy, creativity, leadership, and economic sustainability rooted in lived experience. If hope can live in the most restrictive conditions, it can live anywhere.

Hope is Dope lives through programming, events, cultural work, community gatherings, and economic models that center reflection, celebration, accountability, and care. This includes monthly programming, Circle Parties, restorative commitments, creative work, and shared revenue systems that support both individuals and communities.

This work is for people healing from incarceration and systemic harm, and for communities committed to building something different together. We also work with aligned partners, organizations, and institutions who understand that dignity, stability, and trust are not luxuries, they are foundations.

We are not a crisis-response hotline, a compliance-based program, or a one-size-fits-all service provider. Our work is relational, intentional, and designed for people who want to build, not just survive. We focus on creating conditions where people can lead their own lives with autonomy and support.

Because people impacted by incarceration already hold deep leadership, creativity, and survival wisdom. We have witnessed, firsthand, how community, humor, care, and accountability flourish even in the most restrictive environments. Our work is built on the belief that lived experience is expertise, and that people who have survived systemic harm are fully capable of building sustainable futures when given stability and trust.

Our work is supported through a mix of earned revenue, cultural programming, consulting, events, merchandise, partnerships, and aligned funding. We are intentional about building systems that do not rely solely on grants, and that allow money to circulate back into the communities that generate value.

Money flows toward people, not bureaucracy. Funding supports operational sustainability, program facilitation, participant stability, community projects, and restorative commitments. Transparency and accountability are core values, and financial decisions are made with care and clarity.

Care Without Condition is a restorative funding practice rooted in trust. It exists to support people with resources for stability, safety, and joy, without applications, moral judgment, or forced narratives. Requests range from basic needs to creative and life-affirming support. Care Without Condition operates with clear boundaries, shared values, and founder accountability.

Decisions are made by the founding member of the LLC stewarding the fund. This ensures clarity, accountability, and legal responsibility. It also reflects our belief that leadership should be transparent, human, and grounded in relationship, not hidden behind committees or abstractions.

Care Without Condition is a shared practice, not open-source branding. Communities interested in creating aligned funds are encouraged to be in relationship with us first. This protects the integrity of the practice and ensures it is not replicated in ways that cause harm.

There are many ways to engage, through collaboration, partnership, attending events, purchasing from the store, sharing the work, or reaching out directly. We value alignment over urgency and relationship over transaction.

We love that. If you have a question about our work or approach, reach out, we may even add it to the Frequently Asked Questions.