Annual Report FY 2012

Leadership Message : July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012

Georgia Appleseed’s mission and vision inspire dedicated volunteers not only to work on important justice issues, but also to provide strong governance. This Annual Report covers a productive fiscal year that spans the chairmanship of Joe Loveland and Beth Tanis. Georgia Appleseed owes both, Joe and Beth, a great deal of thanks for the good work you will read about in this Annual Report.

Fiscal Year 2012 was remarkable, with important milestones reached and surpassed, but two major achievements stand out: one in the Heir Property Project and the other in the Effective
Student Discipline: Keeping Kids in Class project.

Heir Property Project: In 2012, by unanimous vote in both the House and the Senate – proof
positive of its bipartisan support –Georgia became the first state in the South, and the second in the nation, to pass the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act. A center piece of Georgia
Appleseed’s Heir Property project in collaboration with its sister centers in Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and South Carolina, this new law will reduce involuntary loss of homes and farms among
low and moderate income Georgians and will serve as the inspiration for passage in other states in the near future.

Effective Student Discipline Project: After years of diligent effort, Georgia Appleseed secured, in FY12, the development of a
significant policy change at the state level that will require longer term suspensions be coded with a specific reason – “other” will
no longer be accepted as a sole reason for “punishment by withholding education.” Without meaningful data, we cannot find
meaningful solutions. Securing this new requirement for specificity is part of our overall goal of keeping kids in school and out of the juvenile courts.

FY12 ended on a strong footing, programmatically and financially, because of friends and supporters like you, and we look
forward to what FY13 has in store.