Many American charities that work to help immigrants and refugees have learned the importance of raising money the hard way. Many such organizations rely heavily on government aid and, to a lesser extent, on charging fees for services such as helping new arrivals complete required paperwork. Their revenues plummeted when former President Donald Trump slashed the number of refugees entering the United States.
While some of Trump’s predecessors allowed 100,000 or more refugees to enter the United States each year, Trump slashed the number to 45,000 in fiscal year 2018; 30,000 in fiscal year 2019; 18,000 in fiscal year 2020; and proposed just 15,000 refugee admissions for fiscal year 2021. Trump’s reductions came as his administration adopted other policies to keep asylum seekers from entering the U.S. at the southern border until they had secured a date for their case to be heard in an American court.
“For those who received government funding tied to the number of refugees coming into the U.S., they were stripped to the bare bones, they were decimated,” said Sarah Hidey, chief development officer at RefugePoint, a Boston charity that has helped more than 100,000 refugees find solutions through resettlement, self-reliance or other pathways to safety.
A refugee crisis draws in funding
On the other hand, charitable donations often surge from individuals, foundations and corporations sympathetic to the plight of new arrivals, like the thousands of Afghans brought to the United States following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service has helped resettle more than 11,000 Afghan refugees in the United States out of some 76,000 Afghans brought here. Last year, the charity received contributions from 15,000 new donors, and contributions have soared from a high of $5 million annually to some $20 million last year. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service used some of the money to add to its staff, which has grown from 60 to 240 people since 2020.
Other donations to the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service have been used to create new programs. One such initiative, called New American Cities, aims to help new arrivals develop skills and advance in the workforce. In April, the new program won a $1 million grant from the Walmart Foundation. The retail giant sees the new arrivals as potential employees and customers, said Andrew Steele, the charity’s vice president of development.
Another new program at the Lutheran charity offers counseling and other assistance to refugees, mostly young unaccompanied clients whose displacement has impacted their mental health, Steele said.
Serving LGBTQ refugees, asylum seekers and migrants
Other charities working with immigrants and refugees have increased fundraising returns by focusing on subgroups within the larger immigrant and refugee population. Since 2019, under the leadership of Executive Director Steve Roth, the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) has concentrated on helping lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. Prior to 2019, the organization had relied heavily on charging fees for its services, but that approach was no longer working, Roth said.
In response, ORAM created an online platform for LGBTQ clients to share their stories, and the charity also uses their real-life experiences in its fundraising solicitations. Since it adopted new practices, ORAM has seen a rise in contributions from individual donors, corporations and foundations. Corporate support, Roth said, has increased — it was at zero before 2019 and now accounts for 15% of all donations.
Meanwhile, three new foundations also supported ORAM last year. Obtaining new foundation support is particularly notable — research by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy has found that while immigrants and refugees account for 14% of the U.S. population, local foundations gave barely 1% of their total grant dollars to benefit foreign-born people. What’s more, less than half of a percent of local grants in the U.S. were earmarked for advocacy or organizing on behalf of immigrants and refugees.
In its 2022 fiscal year, which ended on March 31, ORAM raised $600,000 in contributions, up from $420,000 in 2021. Roth said he is confident that his organization can attract $1 million in donations during fiscal year 2023, which began on April 1.
Centering refugee voices
Since the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and other racially charged tragedies throughout the nation, a renewed focus on diversity, equity and inclusion has also affected the fundraising landscape for charities assisting immigrants and refugees.
“A lot of funders have asked us what we are doing to be equitable. How are you ensuring that refugee voices are heard and are on your board? This has become a key priority, and we are trying to lead by example,” said Hidey of RefugePoint.
To that end, RefugeePoint, which raised more than $7 million in 2020, the latest year for which data are available, has recruited refugees to serve on its board and on an advisory council in Kenya, Hidey said. It also hosted a presentation called Centering Refugee Voices at a global meeting aimed at philanthropists, sharing information on the ways refugees are informing the work of the individuals and charitable organizations backing them.
Current challenges: COVID and the economy
Whether they are struggling to raise money or flush with new contributions, charities that help immigrants and refugees are also facing new fundraising challenges that have only emerged in recent months, and are unlikely to abate any time soon. “The public is in a very foul mood,” said Tim Delaney, chief executive at the National Council of Nonprofits. “We have the pain of inflation, the threat of recession. I think it will be harder to raise money. Then you have nonprofits going under as a result of the pandemic.”
Delaney said that the amount of online traffic on his organization’s website to content about dissolving a nonprofit has increased by 30%. Taking one state as an example, according to Forbes, the Minnesota Attorney General’s office found that nearly 200 of the state’s nonprofits shut down between April 2020 and March 2021 as a result of the pandemic. And up to 38% of charities could permanently shutter as a result of COVID, according to a 2020 analysis by Candid of more than 315,000 nonprofit organizations subjected to different pandemic-related financial scenarios.
In addition, there have been numerous reports nationwide about nonprofit closures stemming from factors like COVID-driven service disruptions, staffing shortages and rising operation costs, but definitive information on nonprofit closures since the beginning of the pandemic remains elusive.
Established operations have a leg up
In the end, it’s probably fair to say that the nonprofit organizations working with immigrants and refugees that are best equipped to survive the pandemic and emerging fundraising challenges related to the economy are those that have moved well beyond government support and charging fees for their services.
HIAS, a 100-year-old charity originally founded to assist Jews seeking safety from antisemitic violence, raised $100 million last year. The charity, which now assists any population seeking safety, had projected that it would raise $140 million by the end of this year. But Miriam Feffer, HIAS vice president for development, now predicts that contributions will be closer to $180 million by December 31. The reason: donors have responded generously to HIAS’s work to assist Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion of their country in a still-ongoing war.
What’s more, rather than depressing charitable contributions, Feffer said that the pandemic appears to have motivated new bequests and other planned gifts to her organization as donors contemplate their own mortality. “We saw an uptick in planned giving,” Feffer said. “We believe that planned giving presented itself as a chance for long-term planning. We have come roaring back as the world keeps delivering crises.”
