Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Winter 2008
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Evidence of Success
Is the Fund’s strategy working so far? To find out, the Touchstone
Center for Collaborative Inquiry launched a study to monitor and evaluate
accomplishments of the Fund’s grassroots advocacy groups. This
evaluation, begun in 2005 and wrapping up in 2010, will measure the
Fund’s impact from the individual to the national level, assessing
how immigrants become more civically engaged through involvement with
grantees, the capacity of grantee organizations to affect social change
and sustain their work as well as the capacity of regional or national
networks to amplify local work and aggregate impact. The results (which
will be disseminated at intervals during the study) aim to promote peer
learning among grantees and funders, to assess success and failure,
and to provide opportunities to make necessary mid-course corrections
in strategy and tactics.
Midpoint analysis indicates collaboration and networking as the field’s greatest overall strengths, while fundraising remains its greatest challenge. Communications capacity continues to be underdeveloped, and sustaining coalitions puts a strain on organizations with limited resources. Over 40 percent of the grantees claimed success in protecting immigrant rights and facilitating citizenship status, and they cited accomplishments in youth organizing, voter registration and leadership development. The following grantee success stories provide convincing evidence that an impressive level of achievement is indeed possible, even under challenging circumstances:
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), a 20-year-old membership organization, is a strong and critical player in the local and national debate on immigrant rights. Past successes have included implementing the Illinois Executive Order for Immigrant Integration3, the first in the nation; registering nearly 80,000 new citizen voters and assisting over 10,000 immigrants to become citizens. ICIRR has expanded its reach and focus over the years and, through its 100-member ethnically diverse organizations, representing Latinos, Irish, Polish, Ukrainians, and Arab/Muslim populations and others, has become more entrenched in immigrant communities of Chicago and surrounding suburban areas. In 2007, ICIRR instituted the Democracy Fellows Program for immigrant youth, who are trained and tasked to carry out a large-scale nonpartisan voter engagement campaign. The initial nineteen fellows registered nearly 16,500 new citizen voters.
The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) is an umbrella policy and advocacy organization founded in 1987 that comprises approximately 150 organizations working with New York City area immigrants and refugees. Accomplishments of NYIC have included registering over 230,000 new citizen voters since 1998; winning over $9 million in city funding for immigrant services and coordinating the most comprehensive response in the nation to the Department of Homeland Security’s Special Call-in Registration Program. NYIC also orchestrated a successful legislative campaign around language access, which resulted in a significant increase of translation and interpretation services at welfare and Medicaid centers throughout New York City, leading Mayor Bloomberg to issue Executive Order 41, the most far-reaching policy in the nation protecting the confidentiality of immigration status information.
3 The “Illinois New Americans Immigrant Policy” Executive Order for Illinois State Government was enacted in 2005 to help the state’s growing immigrant population through research, policy change and advocacy.