Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

New Toolkit Available to Help Foundations Support Immigrant Integration to Benefit Newcomer Populations and Strengthen the Larger Society

Powerful economic and social forces are creating high levels of immigration that have the potential to reshape the future of the United States. The rapid growth and increased dispersal of immigrants across the country over the past 15 years have made newcomers more visible and vital than ever before.

A new toolkit developed by Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) provides a framework to help foundations incorporate immigrant needs and contributions into their grantmaking. Investing in Our Communities: Strategies for Immigrant Integration offers a wide array of resources to guide diverse foundations, from those new to immigrant issues to foundations with extensive experience but are looking for new ideas to advance their work. Its goal is to help funders strengthen both local communities and the country as a whole through newcomer integration strategies.

“As the immigrant population grows,” said Susan Downs-Karkos, senior program officer of The Colorado Trust and co-chair of GCIR’s board of directors, “GCIR believes that an intentional focus on integrating immigrants holds tremendous promise for strengthening communities. In Colorado, where increased immigration has become a hotly debated topic, we have used the framework described in the toolkit to bring together immigrants with a wide range of groups to work together on shared concerns and to ultimately build more vibrant and cohesive communities.”

“The toolkit is a really important resource at a time when the whole immigration issue has become polarized and politicized,” said Nikki Will Stein, executive director of the Polks Bros. Foundation. “It shines light, not heat, on how foundations can deal with the array of opportunities and challenges faced by newcomers to the United States.”

GCIR’s toolkit was developed through extensive research and interviews with hundreds of foundation, community, business, and government leaders. It incorporates academic research as well as policy and community-based concerns into a resource that also can inform the work of practitioners in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. The toolkit offers foundations:

• Concrete recommendations to guide philanthropic investment in immigrant integration activities that connect directly to the missions and priorities of individual foundations.
• The historical perspective on immigrant integration, as well as the demographic, economic, and social imperatives that drive the need for integration today.
• The immigrant integration framework which identifies key stakeholders in the two-way integration process, six pathways to integration, and ways in which integration benefits both the newcomers and the receiving society.
• Profiles of more than 75 promising program and policy models that can inform work in local communities in the areas of community planning, language access, English acquisition, education, health and well-being, economic mobility, equal treatment, social cultural interaction, and civic participation and citizenship.
• A filmography describing recent documentaries that put a human face on complex immigration issues—as well as a DVD of short film clips that can be used to engage foundation colleagues and other stakeholders in productive discussions on immigrant issues.
• A resources section providing fast facts on immigration, a glossary of terms, an overview of U.S. immigration history, and an annotated listing of recommended readings.

“The Promising Practices section is a wonderful resource both for funders who have not previously supported immigration integration as well as those that are considering new or expanded areas of support,” said Wendy Yallowitz, program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “I use the toolkit as a reference to help inform our foundation’s grantmaking, and rely on it as a starting point for exploring possible new program areas to improve the health and well-being of immigrant communities.”

“With the growing expansion of immigrants to new gateways throughout the country,” said Lina Avidan, program officer at the Zellerbach Family Foundation, “community and local foundations will increasingly need to address newcomer issues regardless of their funding priorities. GCIR’s toolkit offers a succinct, easy-to-understand guide that describes how grantmakers at all levels can play an important leadership role at this pivotal time in our country’s history.”

To order a copy of the toolkit, please email Bryan Rhodes or call 707.824.4374.