Fund the Auditor
For Investors

Civil Rights Impact Investing —
What Clean Money Looks Like.

Every dollar of return in this model came from a documented constitutional violation. A government employee on camera, exceeding their authority, settling rather than litigating an indefensible position. The profit is the accountability mechanism. That is what clean money looks like.

The Investment Thesis

A distinct asset class with binary verification.

Close-up of scale of justice detail

Standard impact investing bundles mission alignment with market-rate financial risk — you accept a lower expected return in exchange for knowing your capital is doing something other than extracting value. This model does not ask for that trade-off. The mission is the mechanism by which returns are generated.

How the model generates returns: a funding entity advances operating capital to qualified First Amendment auditors against documented civil rights violations. When those violations produce settlements — which they do, predictably, because the evidence is on camera — the advance is recovered and the entity takes a negotiated percentage of the proceeds. The entity distributes those proceeds to investors proportional to their equity stake. The accountability process produces the financial return. The two are the same event.

"Every dollar of return came from a government entity that violated someone's constitutional rights on camera and got caught. The profit is the accountability mechanism. This is what clean money looks like."

The financial pressure mechanism this model relies on has a documented historical record. The financial pressure history that makes this fundable covers the cases — ADA, Big Tobacco, seatbelts, slavery — where financial leverage moved institutions that moral argument could not. Police accountability is currently stuck at the moral argument stage. This model builds the financial mechanism it is missing.

Risk Profile

What makes this different from standard litigation finance.

Standard litigation finance

Contested liability, interpretive evidence, unpredictable juries.

Due diligence is intensive because outcomes are ambiguous. The investor bets on a human process with multiple points of failure. Terms reflect that uncertainty.

First Amendment auditor funding

On-camera violation. Binary verification. Settlements, not trials.

Either there is a clean, documented constitutional violation that a civil rights attorney will take on contingency — or there is not. The camera is the performance verification mechanism. Outcomes are verifiable before commitment.

The binary nature of the camera evidence does not eliminate investment risk — auditors can still escalate unnecessarily, make legal errors, or encounter jurisdictions that fight every claim regardless of merit. But it compresses the ambiguity range significantly compared to standard litigation finance. The performance-only structure handles the remaining risk: if the case does not settle, no return flows to the funding entity. The investor's risk is loss of the advance on non-settling cases, not open-ended exposure.

Binary camera verification —
violation or no violation
$0 owed by auditor if
case doesn't settle
10% of net profits committed to
complex cases by design
Return Structure

How money moves from violation to investor.

01

Capital deployed as advance

Investor capital funds the operating advances extended to qualified auditors — living expenses, equipment, travel between violations and settlements. Capital is deployed against a documented track record, not speculation.

02

Violations documented on camera

Funded auditors deploy in the field. Documented constitutional violations — on camera, unambiguous — produce the civil rights claims that civil rights attorneys take on contingency and file.

03

Cases settle

Settlement proceeds arrive. The advance is recovered first. The funding entity takes its negotiated percentage of the net proceeds. The auditor keeps the remainder.

04

Net profits distributed

After the 10% tithe commitment is set aside, remaining net profits are distributed to investors proportional to equity stake. Capital cycles back into the next round of advances. The model is self-funding once the first cases settle.

The 10% Tithe

Where 10% of profits go — by design, not aspiration.

Ten percent of every fund's net profits is committed to financing civil rights cases that meet a standard of genuine merit but do not attract standard contingency representation. No camera evidence. Contested facts. Jurisdictions that fight everything. These cases matter. They do not settle cleanly, and they do not make financial sense for a contingency attorney. The model funds them deliberately.

Why the tithe is a structural commitment, not a PR position

The straightforward cases — clean documented violations on camera — are what make the model financially viable. The tithe exists to ensure that financial viability is not achieved at the cost of abandoning the harder work. This is not optional for fund operators building under this model. The tithe is a structural design requirement, built in from the beginning, not added when it became convenient to signal mission alignment.

The attorney capital partners who invest in the fund serve on the advisory board that determines which complex cases receive the tithe allocation. Their legal expertise is the qualification. Their equity stake is the alignment mechanism. See the full structure at where 10% of profits go — by design, not aspiration.

For non-attorney investors, the tithe is a known commitment that applies before investor returns are calculated. It is part of the model you are investing in — transparent, documented, and consistent across every fund operating under this framework.

Capital Partners

Civil rights attorneys are the natural co-investors.

The most obvious co-investors in a First Amendment auditor funding entity are civil rights attorneys — the people who see which cases would settle, who understand exactly what the camera evidence means legally, and who are barred by bar association rules from filling the gap directly. Their knowledge identified the problem. Their passive investment in the funding entity is how they participate in solving it without crossing ethical lines.

A fund with both attorney and non-attorney capital partners benefits from both. The attorney partner contributes legal expertise on case value and the knowledge to advise on tithe allocations. The non-attorney investor contributes capital without bar compliance overhead. Civil rights attorneys are natural co-investors in this model — the two roles are complementary, not competitive.

Ready to participate

Register your interest as an investor.

Submit your information and your jurisdiction. We will connect you with fund operators who are building the structure and need capital partners aligned with the mission.

Register Your Interest Read the Full Model
Investor Questions

What investors ask before committing.

In this context, civil rights impact investing means holding an equity stake in a performance-only funding entity that advances operating capital to First Amendment auditors in exchange for a percentage of civil rights settlement proceeds. The mission and the financial return are the same mechanism: documented constitutional violations that settle produce the proceeds that fund the return.

This is distinct from standard impact investing, which typically asks investors to accept below-market returns in exchange for mission alignment. Here, the mission is the mechanism — not a trade-off against it.

The camera. Standard litigation finance deals with contested liability — evidence is interpretive, expert witnesses disagree, juries are unpredictable. First Amendment auditing generates video evidence of the violation in real time. Either there is a clean, documented constitutional violation that a civil rights attorney will take on contingency — or there is not. The verification is binary.

This does not eliminate risk. Auditors can still make legal errors, escalate unnecessarily, or encounter uncooperative jurisdictions. But the camera compresses the ambiguity range dramatically compared to standard litigation finance targets.

Settlement proceeds arrive from cases filed by civil rights attorneys on contingency. The auditor advance is recovered first. The funding entity takes its negotiated percentage of net proceeds. After the 10% tithe commitment is set aside, remaining net profits are distributed to investors proportional to their equity stake. Capital then cycles into the next round of advances.

The specific terms — equity percentages, advance structure, return timing — are documented before any capital is deployed. There is no ambiguity about what you get and when.

Yes — the tithe is calculated before investor returns. Ten percent of net profits is directed to financing civil rights cases that are genuinely meritorious but too complex for standard contingency representation. This is a structural design requirement of the model, not a discretionary decision made at the operator's discretion.

The tithe is part of what you are investing in. It is documented from the beginning, applied consistently, and overseen by the advisory board of attorney capital partners. The easy cases fund the model. The tithe ensures that model success does not come at the cost of abandoning harder, equally important work. See where 10% of profits go for the full structure.

Submit your information at /start-a-fund. Tell us your jurisdiction, your role (investor), and the general scale of capital you are looking to deploy. We will connect you with fund operators who are building in your jurisdiction and need capital partners. If you are an attorney, the connection will specify that the attorney capital partner ethics requirements apply.

If you want to start your own fund rather than participate in an existing one, that option is also available through the same submission — operators who build and run funds are also a critical role the model needs.

Legal notice: Nothing on this site constitutes legal advice, investment advice, or a solicitation to invest. The funding model described requires qualified legal and financial counsel before implementation. Investment in litigation finance entities carries risk including total loss of invested capital. This site is a public information resource.