Immigration strategies

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Every day, organizations worldwide are engaged in a collective two steps forward, one step back march toward improved immigration services and policies. What hard-earned lessons are these nonprofits, and the foundations that support them, learning from their persistent efforts? This collection of evaluations, case studies, and lessons learned exposes and explores the nuances of effective collaboration, the value of coordinated messaging, the bedrock of ongoing advocacy efforts, and the vital importance of long-term and flexible funding.

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Featured

10 Years of Delivering for Immigrants: Evaluation of the Delivering on the Dream Project

January 17, 2023

Launched in 2012 in response to the opportunity presented under the Obama administration for hundreds of thousands of young people to qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), GCIR's Delivering on the Dream (DOTD) network has proven to be a powerful example of philanthropic collaboration in pursuit of immigrant justice. Through a unique partnership model that leverages national matching funds, state and local funders engage in coordinated grantmaking to strengthen the immigrant rights and service infrastructure in diverse locales. Since its inception, the DOTD network has included 27 collaboratives in 21 states, with more than 160 local, state, and national funders supporting over 700 grantees working in multiple areas, including immigration legal services, education and outreach, and crisis response.Though DOTD in its current form will be sunsetting in 2023, many of the regional collaboratives will continue to convene, providing opportunities for local grantmakers to collaborate and respond to the needs of immigrants in their communities. This brand-new report synthesizes lessons learned from the DOTD network over the past ten years and provides recommendations for future philanthropic collaboration.

Changing the Narrative for Multilingual Learners

July 14, 2023

In 2022, California funders focused on multilingual and early education gathered for a series of learning conversations about how narrative change could positively impact the movement for multilingual education. In the sessions, narrative practitioners, advocates, funders, and evaluators offered these key insights for understanding and supporting narrative change:Narratives, which shape how people see the world and each other, are at the heart of movements for social change.Narrative change is collective work that has more impact when many voices and partners organize themselves around the same narrative.In developing narratives to support multilingual learners, it's essential to engage people with lived experience including students, educators, and families.When partners embrace a unifying narrative, it can align and accelerate work across policy advocacy, organizing, communications, the arts, and other areas.Narrative change is long-term work that requires persistence and multiple strategies to challenge and shift the deep-seated beliefs that uphold injustice.Evaluators have many ways to measure the progress and impact of narrative strategies upon organizations, networks, and in the public dialogue.Funding narrative change requires a different way of thinking than traditional grantmaking focused on discrete projects with short-term outcomes.

Children

Unlocking the Power of Immigrant Communities

June 21, 2023

Thriving communities of first- and second-generation immigrants exist across the country, building robust networks of mutual support and honoring their shared cultures. Although some of these residents may be ineligible to vote, their American-born and/or naturalized family members do indeed have the right. Yet, voter participation gaps suggest voters from immigrant communities are turning out to vote at rates lower than their non-immigrant counterparts.

Civic Engagement

The New York Immigration Coalition 2022 Annual Report

February 1, 2023

This past year was yet another year filled with transition. After years of a full frontal assault on our communities, we had hoped that the new Biden administration would bring about real change and were waiting anxiously for the tide to turn. Later in the year and closer to home, we also ushered in a new administration at the state level and thought that together we were sure to have improved partnership on our issues. But our hope for a real reckoning on the issues critical to immigration was short lived and we learned, once again, that we would on our own to protect and uplift our community. Once again, we would have to come together and be our own best advocates in order to move the needle on the issues that impact us.

Empowering immigrants from arrival to belonging: 2022 Annual Report

January 18, 2023

The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring.

Bolstering Minority- and Immigrant-Owned Businesses by Scaling Up CDFIs

December 12, 2022

To bolster New York's minority- and immigrant-owned businesses and help create community and generational wealth in underserved and under-resourced neighborhoods, city and state leaders should provide new resources to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), enabling them to scale up their operations, boost the number of businesses they help with financing and advising, and extend their reach into communities with the greatest needs.This policy brief puts forth several achievable recommendations for helping New York City's CDFIs expand their reach and increase the number of minority- and immigrant-owned businesses they can serve with small loans, technical assistance, and other support services. The brief, made possible thanks to a grant from HSBC, also documents why CDFIs are crucial to bolstering New York City's most vulnerable businesses and provides a new level of detail about the capacity challenges facing CDFIs on the ground today.

A Ripple, Not a Wave: Comparing the Last Decade of Foundation Funding for Migrant Communities and Movements

October 27, 2022

Since NCRP's first report describing the state of foundation funding for immigrant and refugee groups, the world has grown more dangerous for people on the move.Although COVID-19 slowed migration for a short time, climate disasters and deteriorating social, political, and economic conditions around the world have led more people to seek homes in new places. In the United States, right-wing politicians have continued their decades-long tactic of treating immigrants and refugees as political pawns. Former President Donald Trump used migrants as an easy scapegoat for division, effectively zeroing the country's refugee resettlement goals throughout his presidential term. In 2021, Customs and Border Protection officers on horseback were caught on camera using whips to drive Haitian asylum seekers away. Several Republican governors sent buses or planes misleading migrants north in a craven political stunt. And after 10 years of instability, the Supreme Court looks poised to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for good, meaning more than 600,000 people who have built their lives in the United States will become vulnerable to deportation. These attacks are unfair and harmful not only to people moving across borders, but to all of us.NCRP's new data shows that more funders participate in pro-immigrant and pro-refugee philanthropic spaces today than they did in the past. This is progress, but it's far from enough. NCRP also found that the pro-immigrant, pro-refugee movement's share of all foundation grants has shrunk 11% since DACA was first introduced, even as foundations themselves have grown richer. Too many foundations and major donors have ignored groups that are adept at advocating for their communities and holding political leaders accountable. Because of this, the migrant community – and our country – face more precarity today.In the last few years alone, pro-immigrant and pro-refugee groups have resettled refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine, advocated for the specific needs of queer migrants, organized Black-led groups in a model of mutual aid, strengthened safeguards for our democracy and focused attention on urgent climate emergencies, all while sounding a constant message of welcome. Migrant organizations, especially movement advocacy groups, have done this in the face of an increasingly hostile political environment with extremely limited resources because funders have fallen short.Now more than ever, foundations must move with intention and urgency to center, support and follow the lead of the pro-immigrant and pro-refugee movement.This isn't just the right thing to do. It's also necessary if funders hope to meet their racial justice commitments, support dignity for all and reach groups with underappreciated solutions for each of their "issue" portfolios.NCRP hopes this tool, informed by the deep wisdom of so many community and philanthropic leaders, will help move the philanthropic sector toward justice.

Facing Crises with Resilience: HIAS 2021/2022 Impact Report

September 15, 2022

With more than 100 million forcibly displaced people around the world, an ongoing pandemic, and a war in Ukraine that has caused the largest displacement of people in Europe since World War II, our work at HIAS in recent times has been both extremely difficult and urgently vital.Thanks to committed partners like you, we were able to open our arms in welcome, helping more than 1 million displaced people realize their rights and rebuild their lives in safety and freedom.Read through our 2021/2022 Impact Report to learn more about the essential work your support made possible.

Building Trust with Immigrant and Refugee Families: Spreading and Adapting 2Gen Working Practices

April 22, 2022

Trust between social service organizations and their clients is crucial to effectively provide services to immigrant and refugee families. Our brief on building trust with these groups explores how we can form these relationships and sustain them long-term to best serve these vulnerable communities.

Community-Based Outreach & Activity

Building Forward Together: GCIR 2021 Annual Report

April 13, 2022

Founded in 1990, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) is the nation's only immigrant-focused philanthropy-supporting organization (PSO). GCIR works with our 130 member institutions, the 1,200 individual grantmakers in our network, our partners in the field, and other PSOs to mobilize funder resources on the most pressing issues facing immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

Global Detroit 2020 – 2021 Impact Report

April 12, 2022

Global Detroit is a national leader advocating for and executing strategies to drive equitable local, regional and statewide economic growth through immigrant inclusion. We continue to develop and lead programs centered on global talent, entrepreneurship and neighborhoods with the aim of demonstrating their potential for large-scale impact. We also continue to conduct groundbreaking research, drive policy and serve as a leading advocate for immigrant inclusion as a strategy to build prosperity for everyone in Southeast Michigan.

Evaluation of the Immigrant Rights Portfolio Strategy (2015–2020): Summary Report

April 1, 2022

Since the late 1980s, many policymakers and members of the American public have viewed enforcement as the principal tool of the United States immigration system, either to deter migrants from coming to the country without papers or to punish immigrants who (intentionally or unintentionally) fail to comply with immigration law. As a result, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are arrested and placed in deportation proceedings, or otherwise removed from the U.S., with a disproportionate impact on Black immigrants.Before we launched our strategy in 2015, we listened closely to our grantees whose constituents were directly affected by detentions and deportations that persisted despite policymakers' avowed support for immigrants. Recognizing that immigrants' needs for family unity and an end to harsh enforcement were unlikely to be met through comprehensive immigration reform in Congress, the Immigrant Rights portfolio focused on supporting advocates working on enforcement reform and their goals. In making this commitment, Ford was the first major U.S. philanthropy to establish ending harsh enforcement as a principal focus of its immigrant rights strategy.Over a matter of five years, we invested nearly $118 million in organizations working to achieve changes in advocacy and policy, build the field, and shift the narrative around immigrants. This included approximately $43 million invested through our BUILD initiative and approximately $23 million distributed through our 2020 Social Justice Bond. We provided general support to organizations representing immigrants directly impacted by harsh enforcement, as well as to longstanding grantees who were using litigation, mobilization, advocacy, and communications as tactics that reinforced one another. Other funding helped the movement confront strategic gaps and challenges, draw on expert advice, bring organizations together for collaborative learning, and strengthen philanthropic partnerships.In the fall of 2020, we partnered with consultants Kathleen Sullivan and David Shorr to evaluate this strategy, deepen our learning, and make informed decisions on where to focus moving forward. The evaluation concluded in spring 2021.