Immigrants & Nonprofits

This is a wonderful story, from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, about one person's vision--it all so often starts with just one person--and her nonprofit's work to help immigrants to America become productive.

An excerpt.

“In 2000, while working for a national refugee resettlement organization in New York City, Jane Leu decided that the federally funded system of matching immigrants to careers was a failure.

“We didn’t have an incentive to focus on [the] quality” of the placements, she remembers of her six years of putting highly educated, English-speaking foreigners in low-skill jobs. “It was just about quantity.”

“So with no funding, a borrowed laptop computer, and her kitchen table as a makeshift office, Leu started the nonprofit Upwardly Global, whose goal is to help highly skilled immigrants reclaim their careers in the United States.

“The beginning was rocky. With no funds and no employees, Leu was limited to one-on-one sessions with job seekers, reaching out to foundations for grants, and making employers aware of a hidden talent pool: 1.3 million bilingual workers with degrees and professional experience in every possible white-collar profession.

“Successes trickled in. By 2002, the organization received its first grant and hired its first paid employee. In 2003, Leu’s work was recognized by the Draper Richards Foundation when she became its first fellow, earning a $300,000 grant.

“Today, Upwardly Global employs 29 people to serve some 600 job seekers a year. With offices in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, the organization also relies on its wide network of volunteers. Since 2006, it has helped place 400 people with 300 employers such as Google, Genentech, Wells Fargo, the Gap, Safeway, and the Fresh Air Fund. Although Upwardly Global remains a small nonprofit with an annual operating budget of less than $2 million, it is widely credited for highlighting decades of “brain waste,” says Jeanne Batalova, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. It is also the first organization that reintegrates professional immigrants into the American workforce.”