Pictured above: Glowmundo Founder and Executive Director Candice Bataille
Organizations serving immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers have been critical leaders in protecting individuals’ rights, advocating for policies to protect due process, and providing basic needs to support families. We know our nonprofit partners have the most accurate sense of what’s happening in our communities and the impact it’s having on people’s lives, and as a community foundation, we are committed to working together to protect our communities and ensure they are getting the resources they need.
In 2026, we continue to coordinate and strategize with our partners – community members, nonprofits, and donors– to support our neighbors and invest in immigrant communities. Read about our work in 2024 and 2025.
Our work in 2026
Listening sessions
In the spring of 2026, we hosted a series of three listening sessions to bring together representatives from immigrant-serving nonprofits and donors. These sessions created a space for The Denver Foundation staff and donors to learn more about the direct experiences of immigrant-serving nonprofits in the current moment.
Each session had a distinct focus, with different nonprofits that worked in the following spaces: legal services, public policy, and direct services.
What we learned
Emerging issues that nonprofits are addressing:
- The immigration and residency policies and systems are changing every day. Nonprofits are having to spend additional time and resources to keep up with all the constant changes. The Supreme Court’s decisions are also creating more complexities for nonprofits to navigate.
- Nonprofits are seeing increased harassment and scams by people pretending to be lawyers, targeting immigrant populations, nonprofit staff, and advocates.
- Even though it hasn’t received as much media attention as other parts of the country, nonprofits and the people they support are experiencing increased pressure and strain.
Nonprofit staff experiences
- Nonprofit staff are overwhelmed, under-resourced, and more people are leaving work in this field.
- Staff are experiencing trauma from witnessing what clients are experiencing.
- Nonprofits need more unrestricted support that can be used for staff wellness, and organizations also struggle with already being under-resourced and having to use those unrestricted dollars to fund operations.
Funding and support
- State and federal funding has been cut, whether significantly or entirely.
- The most helpful funding for nonprofits is multi-year, unrestricted support.
- Funders who reduce reporting requirements or offer alternatives to traditional reporting can help increase nonprofit staff’s capacity to serve more people and better meet the increased demand they’re experiencing.
- Funding capacity building and leadership development would be useful to help sustain these organizations’ work.
- Nonprofits need consistent engagement with people who have donated or want to donate, and encourage people to visit their space and see their work. This helps people better understand the complexity and seriousness of the challenges these organizations are facing.
- Nonprofits find it’s difficult to sustain people’s attention and engage in deeper conversations on how to support immigrant communities without them shutting down.
What we’re doing
We gave $100,000 to help nonprofits grow and adapt
We allocated an additional $100,000 to our Capacity Building fund to support immigrant-serving organizations. This fund supports training and education opportunities to help organizations continue growth or adapt to changes. As of Aug. 31, 2026, we’ve granted $88,668 to 17 immigrant-serving organizations.
We continue to engage in policy issues supporting the immigrant community
We advocated for legislative change at the state and local levels to increase protections for immigrant communities. This fall, we are opposing Amendment 81: Law Enforcement Requirements to Federal Authorities in November. This builds on our support of a 2026 bill that created a pathway to take legal action under state law if an individual’s federal constitutional rights are violated by someone carrying out civil immigration enforcement.
Learn more about our policy work and policy positions.
We’ve funded legal support for nonprofits working with immigrant communities
In partnership with the City and County of Denver, we continue to support grantmaking to increase legal services to Denver’s immigrant community through The Denver Immigrant Legal Services Fund. Since establishing the fund in 2018, we’ve granted $4 million, with another round of grants to be awarded in December 2026.
If you are a fundholder at The Denver Foundation and would like to make a contribution from your fund, please contact your relationship manager or email us at help@denverfoundation.org.
