Since Donald Trump won the presidency, groups that help immigrants have seen an outpouring of support from people who want to help. Make the Road New York, an organization that provides legal, educational, and health services to immigrants and Latinos, is looking to put all that energy to good use.
The organization has developed a new volunteer group, Aliadxs, to organize fundraising events, get people out to political rallies and protests, and build support to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. “Aliadxs” is a gender-neutral form of “aliados,” which means “allies” in Spanish.
Make the Road hosted the second monthly meeting of the volunteer group last week in Manhattan, attracting more than 400 people from across the city’s five boroughs — double the attendance of the first meeting in January. And participants aren’t just of Hispanic background; middle- and upper-class white people and others are getting involved, too.
That’s a departure for the organization, which primarily mobilizes people for political campaigns from the communities it serves.
“This is a moment where people are driven to take action,” says Julie Miles, Make the Road’s development and communications director. “And we need more people who want to take action.”
Taking Action
The additional hands come at a time when Make the Road is concerned about hard-line immigration policies being implemented by the Trump administration. This week, the White House announced that it would expand the number of undocumented people who are subject to deportation and allow for more expulsions without hearings, among other enforcement changes.
Recent stories about federal immigration raids and detentions of undocumented people have sent shock waves through immigrant communities. And Mr. Trump vowed to sign a new executive order this week restricting travel for people from seven majority-Muslim nations, replacing a previous executive order that stalled because of court challenges. In the wake of that earlier effort, Make the Road helped turn out protesters at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport — where some affected immigrants were being detained — and has drawn thousands of people to protest and other rallies since.
Make the Road is expecting to lead many more political campaigns — and high levels of participation will be important. “We need more people mobilizing and saying, ‘What’s happening isn’t OK,’ " Ms. Miles says. “We need people to make phone calls with short notice and mobilize their friends.”
Meanwhile, the organization is concerned about its funding. About 60 percent of Make the Road’s money comes from government sources, a lot of which originates at the federal level. The group fears that at least some of that money — which mostly goes toward its legal, health, and education services — could be cut in the coming years.
While the organization has seen a surge in online donations since the election, it needs more. “Honestly we haven’t come close to raising what we need to raise to pay for the additional resources and staff time that we’ve put forward” so far, Ms. Miles says.
New Donors
Staff members think that Aliadxs members will be key to mobilizing a response. The organization is encouraging members to become monthly donors and to urge others to give and get involved in the nonprofits’ political actions.
The hope is that Aliadxs members will spread the word about the organization far and wide and that that will lead to “new donors and new sources of funding — both in terms of breadth and also in bigger, deeper contributions,” Ms. Miles says.
Make the Road doesn’t see Aliadxs as a silver bullet: Development staff need to continue seeking foundation support and find more big donors. Still, the staff thinks now is a better time than ever before to build support from as many people outside the organization as possible.
At last week’s Aliadxs meeting, Make the Road divided volunteers into eight teams for different purposes. One team, for instance, will be focused on orienting new Aliadxs members, while another will come up with ideas for fundraising events.
More than 35 people also applied to join Aliadxs’s “core team,” a leadership committee to keep its momentum going.
The organization wants each team to meet once or twice a week outside of the monthly Aliadxs meetings and for some team members to work at least a few hours a week to make progress on their team’s goals.
“We’re expecting a tremendous amount out of our volunteers, and we know that they can do it,” says Ben Wolcott, a Make the Road political organizer who helped develop the structure of Aliadxs’s teams. “At the same time, it’s going to be a challenge. At times, it might be a little bit messy.”
Competing Demands
Part of the challenge will be to ensure that staff devote enough time to Aliadxs while still fulfilling their other duties.
Last week, Mr. Wolcott and Vanessa Dubyn, a fundraiser for the organization, were scrambling a few hours ahead of the Aliadxs meeting to complete a PowerPoint presentation and a 14-page document laying out Aliadxs’s goals and structure to distribute at the meeting later that night.
While it’s exciting that so many people are willing to help, Ms. Dubyn says, the time required to coordinate the group so far has been taxing. “I think we have a great plan in motion,” she says. “Can we use an extra day or two to print everything and do all of those pieces? Sure.” She added that it would be ideal to dedicate a full-time employee to work solely on Aliadxs, but there’s no room in the budget for that yet.
Ms. Miles says that as the core volunteer team starts to take over more responsibilities, she’s hoping that employees will be able to reduce the amount of time they spend assisting the group. “I think we’ve been really clear that we’re investing a lot time in helping to get the group up and running,” she says. But through training and education, she’s hoping that volunteers will make Aliadxs as self-sustaining as possible.
Make the Road also wants to ensure that Aliadxs’s goals are in line with those of the immigrant communities the organization serves. Aliadxs members are asked to sign a pledge that states they are committed to supporting those who are most affected by new immigration policies and are committed to allowing immigrants to take the lead over the organization’s priorities and messages. “Ultimately, it’s our membership base who will be the ones who are setting the strategy that we’re following,” Ms. Miles says.
Volunteer Views
Volunteers say the success of Aliadxs will depend on how many people stay active.
“There’s always the chance that people will get distracted or not be able to commit to things the way they might have thought,” says Louise Geller, a Brooklynite who joined the group’s fundraising team at its most recent meeting. Ms. Geller volunteered to be the team’s “facilitator” — meaning she will hold team members accountable and develop meeting agendas.
Ms. Geller is optimistic. “It’s been three months since the election, and people thought that the passion would die out. I think it’s just grown.”
Helen Bolton, who also joined the fundraising team, agrees. “People are just really overwhelmed by how quickly things are happening, and how awful they are,” she says. “They just want to do something.”
