AT SOME NONPROFITS, A DELICATE BALANCE OF GRIEF AND STRATEGY
At organizations across the country, many of them progressive, leaders are grappling with dual imperatives: supporting staff and communities still reeling from the election’s outcome, while also charting concrete plans to address the challenges ahead. For many groups — especially those that serve politicized causes like LGBTQ rights, immigration, and climate change — the moment calls for both creating space for grief and building resolve and relationships for what’s to come.
“The next four years are not going to be for the faint of heart,” said Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for the Texas-based immigration nonprofit RAICES, referring to plans drawn by Trump and his allies to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, which he says could devastate immigrant and refugee families.
“We will be okay. We will rise up stronger,” said Al-Juburi, whose organization, founded in 1986, has become a leading immigration legal services provider in Texas. “But it’s also important to give space to breathe, to replenish ourselves, because that’s how we will be able to sustain our fight for justice.”
“When one of us is down, the rest of us will be here to lift each other up,” Al-Juburi has told his team, emphasizing the need to embrace joy and community when possible, celebrate incremental victories, and recognize “the need to resist zero-sum thinking” in what is likely to be a challenging few years ahead.
As an immigrant rights organization in a red state under the Trump administration, he added that philanthropic support will be critical to RAICES’s work in the years to come, which he expects to include expanded legal and social services for immigrants and refugees targeted by the administration.
“For philanthropists, this is a time to be bold, a time to be fearless, and a time to be loyal,” Al-Juburi said, noting that immigration has traditionally received little philanthropic support. “This is the time to lean in, listen to service providers on the ground, and make long-term investments within the space.”
