Immigrant and Refugee Legal Services Assessment

Immigrant and Refugee Legal Services Assessment

Client

Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees

Context

In 2019, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR)—a philanthropy-supporting organization dedicated to mobilizing funder resources on the most pressing issues facing immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers—contracted RDA to conduct a needs and assets assessment to understand California’s immigrant and refugee-related legal services landscape.

Approach

Throughout the life of this project, RDA worked closely with GCIR and a Project Advisory Committee in a collaborative and iterative process to develop data collection tools, identify key stakeholders, validate key findings, and generate recommendations. We began our data collection and analysis with a review of existing reports and data sources to obtain contextual information about the current state of immigration policy, patterns, and funding in California. Next, RDA conducted 20 key informant interviews with executive-level staff from legal service organizations that specialize in immigration, community-based and advocacy organizations that focus on immigrant and refugee communities, and public agencies. These interviews focused on the current state (types of legal services available); the desired state (the optimal or ideal landscape of legal services); the unmet need (whether due to absence of services, limited capacity of existing services, or both); and recommendations (opportunities, innovations, and models that exist elsewhere or could be developed to meet the need). Interviewees were selected to reflect a diversity of regions, services provided, and population types. In addition to legal service providers in California, RDA also conducted two interviews with funders in other states to learn about promising and recommended practices for funders. To engage a wider audience, RDA also administered an online survey to a broad range of immigration legal service providers across the state. The survey covered services provided, organizational capacity, perceptions of the key legal needs of immigrants and asylum-seekers, and promising practices.

Results

Based on analysis of these data, RDA developed a report that summarizes key findings and offers recommendations to strengthen immigration legal services in California. Through this report, RDA equipped GCIR and its partners to take a data-driven approach to maximizing philanthropic and public investments in legal services for immigrants and refugees.

1_LA homelessness-b

Homeless Outreach Network Evaluation

5_legal-b

Reducing Revocations Challenge: Santa Cruz County Action Research

9_girlscouts

Assessment and Program Design

< Back to Impact

RDA can help you achieve
outcomes like these.

Let's talk

“RDA has provided exemplary support for the Contra Costa County Adult Education Consortium for the past three+ years. Their professional approaches and skills have facilitated challenging partnership and organizational discussions while assisting our consortium to successfully meet every programmatic and compliance milestone. We consider their organization an integral part of our own, as well as our success. Thank you RDA!”

Kim Schenk
Senior Dean of Curriculum and Instruction, Diablo Valley College
Contra Costa County Adult Education Consortium

“RDA always produces high quality, thoughtful and valuable work products for CIBHS as a customer. A recent stakeholder input project for the Bay Area received high praise from our county partners. The team is approachable, responsive and flexible. RDA has the ability to interpret the needs you have for a project and design something impactful that reflects your intended vision. I would highly recommend RDA for your next evaluation project.”

Amy Faulstich, MSW
Senior Associate - California Institute for Behavioral Health Solutions

"We have partnered with RDA on research, evaluation, technical assistance, and grant writing projects and have had overwhelming success. A strong working relationship drives our ability to develop effective planning and implementation strategies. They listen, adapt, guide and bring a tremendous amount of expertise and focus to our collaborative efforts."

David Mauroff
Chief Executive Officer - San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project

"The Santa Cruz County Probation Department has enjoyed working with RDA over the past 4 years and found their staff to be exceptionally professional and highly dedicated to helping my department use data to illustrate successes and identify areas for improvement.  They produce high quality and accurate reports, which help us use data to inform policy and practice change. I highly recommend them."

Fernando Giraldo
Chief Probation Officer - Santa Cruz County Probation Department

"The RDA team was such a help for us all these years.  They took care of every piece of our evaluation and produced reports that were very high-quality and thorough.  The RDA team was always very accommodating of our data challenges and always did their best to help us make use of what they discovered.  RDA was a partner with our program."

Courtney Welch
Program Director, Assisted Outpatient Program (AOT)
Northern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services

"Rubicon has reaped many benefits through partnering with RDA over the last several years. RDA delivers stellar project management, proposal writing, and facilitation services. The RDA team provides an optimal balance of organization, accountability, and personability that makes partnerships easy and effective. If a funding proposal or project convening is entrusted to RDA, you can be certain you are in good hands!"

Dr. Carole Dorham-Kelly
President and CEO - Rubicon Programs

"We can't thank Gina Martinez and Stephanie Bimar enough for their compassionate support and guidance while NAMI-Santa Clara County navigates our faith leader grant in the midst of a pandemic. Gina and Stephanie are professional, highly skilled and dedicated to supporting mental health transformation; and they go the extra mile to serve their clients.   We highly recommend them to any company or agency in need of data gathering and reporting."

Dawn Brown
Team Lead, FaithNet Program - NAMI Santa Clara County