This article is the first in a four-part series focused on gun violence prevention work within the Milken Institute, detailing significant research points and foundational building blocks to moment address gaps and levers for support long-term sustainability.
Picture your life at sixteen. You wake up, get dressed, and head out the door for school. You walk to the bus stop, but something doesn’t feel right. The corner—usually busy with commuters and neighborhood regulars—is abnormally quiet and empty. Then you see fragments that shape the night before: shell casings across the pavement, remnants of a shooting. The punctuation of last night’s violence lingers. The bus slowly pulls up.
I headed to school carrying cautions for tomorrow, sadness of unknown lives lost, and the heaviness of understanding the strains that lead to gun violence. I carry this memory with me, decades later, still aware of the impact the experience had on me at that moment.
Gun violence is both a public safety emergency and a public health crisis, affecting every community in the United States. In 2025, nearly 15,000 people died from gun violence homicides, and more than 26,000 were injured by a firearm. Since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death among US children, surpassing cancer, poisoning, and motor vehicle-related deaths.
To identify opportunities for business, philanthropy, and finance to improve community safety, the Milken Institute Environmental and Social Innovation team is conducting research to better understand the scope of gun violence and firearm-related injuries in America. With support from A Fund for a Safer Future—a national network of funders—and partnering with the Milken Institute’s Financial Innovations Lab, the team has set out to answer the question: “What financing models can help sustain and scale community violence intervention as an effective strategy for gun violence prevention?”
This research emphasizes the need to move beyond traditional funding—such as government grants, charitable donations, and self-funding—to ensure the financial sustainability of community violence intervention (CVI) programs. Doing so requires innovative financial structures that engage private investors, government partners, philanthropists, and program implementers. Addressing gun violence demands a fundamental shift in how society understands, values, and invests in prevention. The Milken Institute’s Future of Community Safety initiative advances research and partnerships to build collaborative, sustainable, and equitable systems that expand opportunity and strengthen community safety while remaining committed to addressing urgent needs.
CVI is one of the most promising strategies for addressing gun violence. This public health approach is an evidence-based, multidisciplinary, and customizable methodology that disrupts cycles of violence and connects people at the highest risk with services addressing trauma and improving physical, social, and economic well-being. CVI treats violence as a contagious disease — identifying it, interrupting its spread, and addressing the conditions that allow it to thrive. Rather than relying solely on law enforcement, CVI focuses on the social and community roots of violence.
Because gun violence disproportionately affects marginalized communities, CVI is community-led. It mobilizes people with lived experience of high-risk activity, fostering shared trust and credibility. Common models include violence intervention, hospital-based interventions, and wraparound services like employment and education. Together, these efforts create coordinated ecosystems that address both risks of violence and the underlying social and economic factors that drive it.
CVI programs center their work in core areas where the highest rates of crime and violence occur. Staff work to prevent and intervene in incidents by canvassing, engaging high-risk individuals, mediating conflicts, responding to incidents, preventing retaliation or revictimization, and identifying resource needs.
CVI has proven effective in reducing gun violence: cities such as Baltimore, MD, Chicago, IL, Philadelphia, PA, and Oakland, CA, are experiencing historic lows in gun violence, often attributed to multipronged strategies that incorporate CVI. Many cities implementing CVI strategies have seen reductions in violence of more than 40 percent over the last several years.
Despite its success, CVI funding remains fragmented and inconsistent, making it difficult to assess the full return on investment. Funding typically comes from a variety of government sources, charitable giving, and self-funding. Programs often rely heavily on short-term government grants and a small set of philanthropic institutions. Funding is often restrictive, reimbursement-based, and tied to political cycles, complicating organizations’ planning, staff retention, and efforts to scale their impact. In 2025, approximately $169 million in federally allocated CVI funding was eliminated. Additionally, based on a 2024 analysis, an estimated $377 million in American Rescue Plan funds previously allocated for CVI are set to expire at the end of this year.
The grassroots, lived-experience foundation of CVI organizations contributes to their success—but also creates barriers to funding and limited program capacity. Structural inequities further compound financial instability. Grant requirements, compliance burdens, and credit constraints often disadvantage organizations, limiting their ability to secure resources. As a result, the programs best positioned to reduce violence are often the least financially secure.
Sustaining CVI programs requires system-level solutions for financial models and program scalability. Coordination among government, philanthropy, business, and community organizations demands systems that are flexible, equitable, and aligned with the approach's relational nature.
While CVI has demonstrated strong outcomes, more rigorous and consistent evaluation is needed to measure its full impact and communicate its value to funders and policymakers. This includes not only reductions in violence, but also broader outcomes such as economic mobility, community stability, and quality of life. Data collection and evaluation must respect privacy, maintain community trust, and reflect locally defined measures of success.
Gun violence forces individuals and communities to navigate norms no one should have to accept as ordinary. Communities trapped in generational cycles of violence, failed by broken systems, and denied pathways to economic opportunity are most at risk. This is precisely why CVI must be prioritized. The emergence and growing impact of CVI make it evident that reducing and ultimately eliminating gun violence requires more than quick fixes. It needs long-term investments in public safety and the broader well-being of the communities most affected.
CVI has already demonstrated its ability to save lives. The question now is whether systems can evolve quickly enough to sustain and build on that progress. Without it, the progress made in reducing violence may prove temporary. CVI is proving to transform how communities respond to violence, building safety, resilience, and opportunities now and for future generations.
