Immigration Advocacy: The California Endowment Project

by Ehren D. Reed

Innovation Network was recently hired by The California Endowment ("TCE") to conduct an evaluation of the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative ("CIWC").  A statewide partnership among four immigration and social justice agencies, CIWC has spent the last decade advocating on behalf of low-income immigrants in California.  With CIWC's 10-year anniversary approaching, both CIWC and TCE see this as an ideal time to look back and assess the Collaborative’s accomplishments so far.

Through the evaluation, we will provide CIWC and TCE with a better understanding of the components that contribute to a successful advocacy effort.  We will document its activities, examine its community education and outreach efforts, and analyze its positioning as a leader in welfare reform.  Additionally, the evaluation will assess the overall impact of the coalition and its ability to influence health and welfare policy at both state and local levels.

Innovation Network will be using a multi-layered approach in evaluating the Collaborative, comprised of both a macro- and strategy-level assessment.  At the macro-level, we will look at the Collaborative as a whole and, in particular, its structure and effectiveness in achieving policy change.  At the strategy-level, we will consider each of CIWC’s strategies independently, examining their implementation and effectiveness in enabling the Collaborative to reach its desired benchmarks.  

We are particularly excited about this project in light of the potential synergy with our other advocacy-related work for The Atlantic Philanthropies, JEHT Foundation, and the Washington Area Women's Foundation.

For more information about CIWC, visit: http://www.caimmigrant.org/index.htm