Who’s Providing Support for Immigrant Students?

This feature article was first published by Inside Philanthropy on April 23, 2024.

According to data from the most recent census report, 46.2 million people living in the U.S. (15.6%) were born outside the country. About 10.5 million are undocumented.

The U.S. is and always has been a country of immigrants, but they also face a wide array of unique challenges. This is an especially fraught time given the ongoing efforts to pass border legislation that would dramatically reduce asylum protection and limit pathways to legal migration, as well as an upcoming election that will almost certainly include a famously anti-immigrant candidate.

As such, IP’s planning a new series that will map out some of the biggest philanthropic supporters of immigrant and refugee causes. According to data from Candid, between 2012 and 2024, funders in the U.S. awarded approximately $4.49 billion across the issue areas of immigrant rights, immigrant services, immigration and naturalization and immigration law. Top funders include Silicon Valley Community Foundation, NEO Philanthropy, the Ford Foundation, The California Endowment, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Four Freedoms Fund, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and Zellerbach Family Foundation, Seattle Foundation, and Unbound Philanthropy, among others. (Be sure to read IP’s State of American Philanthropy report on trends and major players in funding for immigrants and refugees.)

Since this is a fairly broad topic, we’ll be breaking things down into separate issue areas, starting with funding for students and education. According to a recent report from The Education Trust, there are more than 427,000 undocumented students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. Immigrant students face a number of obstacles to obtaining an education, including restrictions on their ability to enroll in these institutions, difficulty obtaining work permits, and limits on accessing driver’s licenses, state healthcare, and food and housing assistance, per the report.

According to Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit that works to empower undocumented youth to achieve their educational and career goals, the main obstacle for college-bound undocumented students is money, given that these students do not qualify for federal and most state-based financial aid.  (Immigrants Rising funders include College Futures Foundation, Crankstart, The Gonzalez Family Giving Fund, The Grove Foundation, Stupski Foundation, Truist Foundation, and Zellerback Family Foundation, among others.)

Funding for immigration remains a small sliver of overall philanthropy, with political urgency leading to periods of increased funding that typically wanes over time. For example, according to a report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), funding for the pro-immigrant and pro-refugee movement increased during the Trump administration, but overall, from 2011 to 2020, the share of U.S. foundation funding for the movement actually dropped 11%.

We’ve seen this dynamic when it comes to support for immigrant students, as well. For example, shortly after the Obama administration announced the DACA program, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) launched its Delivering on the Dream (DOTD) initiative, which supported funder collaboratives to invest in and protect the rights of immigrants and refugees. According to a report that evaluated the project over its 10-year run, DOTD supported 27 funder collaboratives in 21 states, regranted almost $17 million from national funders with local funders matching that amount to produce more than $86 million for a total of $103 million raised. Despite this success, the network sunset last year due to a decrease in national funding.

It’s also worth mentioning that in May 2021, the Chicago-based Schuler Education Foundation pledged $500 million to increase the enrollment of undocumented and low-income students in liberal arts colleges. While the initiative had awarded $95 million in grants by the end of 2022, the foundation has since suspended the program. The foundation will shut down by the end of August, according to a report by Forbes.

Despite these setbacks, there are still funders working in this space. To that end, here are some of the funders supporting immigrant students and youth.

Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund

The California-based Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund is dedicated to advancing equity and justice. Among its main areas of focus are immigrant rights and college success. As such, it should come as no surprise that it is one of the big funders supporting immigrant students. The Haas, Jr. Fund works with partners both in California and across the nation to limit the separation of families and the deportation of Dreamers, as well as to create pathways to citizenship for these students. In addition, it seeks to increase access to opportunities for healthy development, educational attainment and workforce integration for immigrant youth in California.

As part of its work, the Haas, Jr. Fund has awarded grants to remove barriers to in-state tuition and financial aid for undocumented students, funding organizations that support the completion rates of California Dreamers Act Application (CADAA), and those that support narrative change strategies that create educational opportunities for undocumented students, among others.

The Haas, Jr. Fund has also supported the California Campus Catalyst Fund, which was a four-year grantmaking initiative that provided funding to support undocumented students, including resource centers, legal services and mental health services across the state’s three public higher education systems: California Community Colleges, California State University, and University of California. Other supporters of the fund included the Chavez Family Foundation, Crankstart, Heising-Simons Foundation, Hellman Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation and Weingart Foundation.