Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

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.