Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Winter 2008
Fifty organizations working in 28 states today receive grants from the Four Freedoms Fund. Many of the smaller or local organizations rely on statewide or regional “anchor” coalitions for leadership and training. The Fund’s Capacity Building Initiative, a special contribution of $4 million over three years from the Ford Foundation, is strengthening these anchor coalitions and ensuring their effectiveness over the long haul. Halfway through the initiative, there is a demonstrable increase in organizational capacity in terms of fundraising, financial health, data systems, and staffing. The Fund’s Strategic Communications Initiative has also made a major impact at the end of its first year, providing training, research, coordination and funding to over 75 local organizations. As a paradigm that has grown beyond its original mission, the Fund has proven the effectiveness of:
An “anchor strategy” of supporting strong groups and coalitions
in many states that add up to a coordinated national network;
Donor collaboration at a high and sustained level, encompassing both collaborative
and individual grants;
Ability to leverage more overall support for immigrants’ rights
and integration;
Trust and cooperation among funders and grantees that drives a vital partnership
for social change;
Usefulness of strategic research to align field and funding priorities;
Utilization of capacity building and strategic communications support
to equip and strengthen a national infrastructure to address escalating,
hostile anti-immigrant attacks at the national, state and local levels
and
Continuing opportunities to pursue workable, feasible solutions to the
need for immigration reform.
What’s Next for the Fund?
Four Freedoms Fund grantees clearly have their work cut out for them in
influencing policymakers to take steps toward reform and in persuading
the public to support the acceptance of immigrants and to pass policies
that will ensure their rights are protected. Early in 2007, when Comprehensive
Immigration Reform legislation looked likely to succeed, public opinion
seemed to support a path to citizenship even for undocumented immigrants
if proper procedures were followed and fines paid.
President Bush had been clear about wanting to make the bill his signature domestic legislation. But with today’s increasing polarization around immigrants and the dearth of national leadership willing to speak out on their behalf, the Four Freedoms Fund believes it will be important to challenge anti-immigrant ordinances and to communicate the value and contribution of immigrants to the American economy and culture—only then will the country’s twelve million undocumented (commonly called “illegal”) immigrants be able to emerge from the shadows. All the funders are behind this strategy, convinced that only with increased support will the approximately 12 million legal residents get the help needed to naturalize and become active citizens.
Guided by a keen understanding of these challenges, the Fund is building on the strategic grantmaking it has developed to date, bringing in new donors and/or leveraging other funders’ grantmaking at the local or regional level. Going forward, the Fund will continue to support a coordinated national infrastructure of organizations working to defend the rights of immigrants and to promote immigrants’ full integration into American society, particularly through civic participation. As Geri Mannion says, “just as the immigrants of the last century—the Irish, Italian, East European and Chinese—have contributed to the economic, political and cultural health and wealth of the nation, also in the wake of anti-immigrant backlash, Carnegie Corporation and other Four Freedoms Fund donors will help the new immigrants of the 21st century make sure that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words ring as true for this new wave of immigrants as they did for the last wave. Not only is this in the best interests of immigrants but, as we have learned from the past, it is also in the best interests of our nation.”