As the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border fuels an explosive public debate, a group of grant makers is working to show donors how to develop long-term solutions to a refugee crisis that has been roiling for years.
The group, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, has compiled a set of case studies on how 10 foundations fashioned their support of some of the world’s most vulnerable migrants.
“We have been experiencing a dual crisis,” said Taryn Higashi, executive director of Unbound Philanthropy, one of the groups profiled in the report. “At the global level there’s an unprecedented number of people fleeing persecution and violence, and at the same time, the United States is rolling back longstanding protections for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at an alarming rate.”
Other grant makers featured in the report include the Open Society Foundations, the Samuel S. Fels Fund, and the Texas Access to Justice Foundation.
Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees didn’t release the case studies in direct response to the policy of family separation at the border. Over the past year, its members have worked to develop a more coordinated response to President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, including the ban on travelers from certain majority-Muslim countries, changes in criteria to qualify for asylum, and rescission of the policy allowing “Dreamers” — undocumented people brought across the border by family members when they were children — to remain in the country.
The resulting report was released to coincide with today’s World Refugee Day. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees designated June 20 as a day to highlight the stories of people who flee their countries because of war, persecution, or violence and uses the hashtag #withrefugees to promote the event.
But the immediate crisis, prompted by the newly established policy of splitting up migrant families, even if they are asylum seekers, and the decision by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to revoke the granting of asylum for victims of gang and domestic violence, has attracted interest from a slew of donors, Higashi said.
She hopes to convert the anguish many of them feel into long-term support.
“We want people to channel that concern in productive ways, and to sustain it,” Higashi said. “It’s going to take a long time to repair the harms that are being caused by today’s policies and actions.”
Other nonprofit leaders are expressing fierce opposition to the family-separation policy.
In a statement issued Tuesday, the chief executives of the American Heart Association, Catholic Charities, Feeding America, Lutheran Services of America, and 10 other major health and human-services charities slammed the policy as “wrong and immoral” and called on the government’s Office of Refugee Resettlement to halt the policy immediately.
Educating the Public
The Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees report draws several lessons from the case studies.
To achieve more impact, the report suggests, foundations should consider helping cash-starved refugee nonprofits develop ways to attract new clients and grants, and evaluate possible mergers with other organizations to make programs more sustainable.
The report further urges foundations to pool their grant making, working as a group to identify causes in dire need of support and boosting awards if they feel more resources should be devoted to a specific issue.
And to fully weather the crisis, grant makers should consider turning short term rapid-response grants into longer, multi-year engagements, the report says. It also suggests that donors offer grantees more flexibility in grant-making requirements, provide more general operating support, and become more vocal advocates for refugees.
Unbound Philanthropy, which operates in the United States and Britain, began its U.S. grant making on refugee issues modestly in 2014 with gifts to the charities Kids in Need of Defense and the Women’s Refugee Commission. The grant maker’s focus at the time was on protecting undocumented immigrants, particularly refugee children, from what it considered harsh enforcement of the law.
Since then, the organization grew more concerned with anti-immigration activists’ increasingly harsh rhetoric characterizing refugees as dangerous or destructive. In response, it has supported efforts to change public understanding of refugees. That work, conducted largely through the Church World Service, includes developing a curriculum to train refugees to get involved in the debate.
The grant maker has also contributed to the Four Freedoms Fund, a pooled fund of donors to immigrant programs, to try to get donors to support immigrants of all types, regardless of whether they are documented, arrive without legal status, or are seeking asylum. In 2016, Unbound Philanthropy gave the fund $750,000; in 2017, it raised its giving to $800,000, and so far this year it has provided $600,000.
The broader goal is to coordinate the efforts of foundations that give to support immigrants, and to help refugees share stories in their own voices about the hardships they’ve escaped and their aspirations for the future.
“There’s misunderstanding and fears about newcomers,” said Ted Wang, director of Unbound Philanthropy’s U.S. Programs and a co-chair of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. “What we need to do over the long term is build public understanding and support so we can create a more welcoming environment, particularly when there is a crisis.”
Wang thinks more grant makers will follow their lead. He hopes the case studies, and follow-up webinars and meetings that are in the works, will help donors work collectively on the issue.
“We know there is interest in philanthropy right now,” he said. “We want to be able to have a structure to share information and start thinking about coordination between funders.”
Correction: A previous version of this article said Unbound Philanthropy began its grant making on refugee issues in 2011; it should have said 2014 and specified this was U.S. grant making.
