Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

 This examines bridging leadership between NGOs and government. This case focuses on the work of Margie McHugh and her associates at the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC). During the 1990's, they labored to turn a respected, though loose-knit and somewhat ill-defined coalition of community-based immigrant organizations into a high-performing institution, which has become a major force at the national level in the area of immigration and immigrant policy. The strategies and methods used by the NYIC are based on the concepts of partnership or "bridge-building", and have attracted attention for their "sustainable collaborative systems that address critical social and economic needs." This case study documents how the NYIC has evolved over the years to the point in which today, it represents a new model for linking people to organizations and felt needs to strategies, and eventually, to policy change.

This GCIR case study highlights The Chicago Community Trust's three-year, $1.5 million immigrant integration initiative. Supporting local government leadership and public-private partnerships is a central strategy of this initiative. Explore this case study and learn how this strategy can help foundations leverage their grants and achieve greater impact.

Learn more about public-private strategies by joining Cities of Migration and Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees for a 60-minute discussion on integration strategies for municipal leaders, January 19, 2010.

In 2003, the Fund for New Citizens began a Capacity-Building Initiative to strengthen immigrant-led groups in New York City by enabling them to address critical management issues. By providing grantees with both grants and technical assistance, the Fund aimed to help individual grantees strengthen their programs and expand their budgets, while also increasing the groups' individual and collective capacity to advocate on behalf of their constituents. From 2003 to 2007, the Initiative's 27 grantees took on a range of projects related to fiscal management, technology, fundraising, leadership development, and governance.

The aim of this report is to gauge how the Initiative has affected grantees, individually and collectively, over the past five years. In short: What kind of results has the Capacity-Building Initiative produced? The report seeks not only to highlight the key factors that bring an organization to the next level of growth and sustainability, but also to illustrate the effect the Initiative has had on grantees' ability to advocate on behalf of their constituents.

This article details how two funders joined forces to introduce immigrant leaders to foundations across New Hampshire and explains how a publication profiling 10 newcomers permeated the community in ways no one had ever anticipated.

GCIR partnered with the Endowment for Health in New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and the Norwin S. and Elizabeth N. Bean Foundation to produce this publication. The 16-page collection of stories sheds light on the varied backgrounds of newcomers to the state, the challenges they faced in their homelands, and the talents and skills they bring to their new communities.