Rage Giving to Nonprofit Migrant-Serving Law Firms
We have talked about three things separately so far this year. We talked about rage giving in the context of donations to the Casanova Killer’s defense fund. Not only do some people want to support his defense, they almost explicitly excuse his assassinating UnitedHealth’s CEO because they are so mad at the health care system. Indignation is apparently very intoxicating. We have also talked about the coming war on migrant serving nonprofits. And we talked about the good works exempt law firms perform. Here is a story that loosely ties together all three topics.
A study published last week concludes that donations to migrant serving nonprofit law firms increased during the first Trump administration, largely as a result of his “build the wall to keep rapists and drug dealers out” anti-immigrant rhetoric. Here is the abstract:
The 2016 US election of Donald Trump ushered in a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric and federal policies that have been shown to harm immigrant families. This study examines how the election affected immigrant-serving community-based organizations (CBOs), which provide vital support to these communities and may mitigate harm. Focusing on migrant-legal CBOs — a key subset that offers pro-bono or low-cost legal services — and incorporating theories from organizations, social movements, and political opportunity, we assess whether these organizations were able to leverage the election as a focusing event to attract funding and whether they sustained this support over time. Using Internal Revenue Service records, we identify migrant-legal aid CBOs with a track record of delivering legal services to immigrant communities. Using synthetic control methods, we find that financial resources to migrant-legal CBOs increased from 4 to 11 percentage points during the 2016 election, and were 8 to 17 percentage points higher through 2019, the last year of available data. Our study shows that amid the shifting anti-immigrant policy climate of the Trump election, migrant-legal CBOs mobilized as a counterforce, using the socio-political landscape and public response as an opportunity to secure and sustain financial support, potentially acting as a safeguard against the escalating anti-immigrant climate.
Here is an interesting summary from the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
The study reviewed IRS data from 2006 to 2019, the latest available, on community-based nonprofits and how funding for immigrant-serving groups changed compared to other organizations. The funding came from individual donations, foundations, and local and state governments. The researchers sought several explanations for the jump in aid in 2015 — ranging from whether giving to migrants was dictated by the local partisan makeup or upticks in immigrant arrests — but the only reliable predictor of the boost was the nomination and election of president Trump.
“Every other thing that we had in mind didn’t pan out when we put it under the weight of the evidence. It really is a story of trends over time after Trump announced,” Pedroza said. “People stayed tuned in to the need.” Both experts on nonprofits and those running them say that the findings line up with what they saw on the ground. Jennifer A. Taylor, who studies nonprofits and co-authored the book “Rage Giving,” noted over email that the study falls in line with her understanding of the phenomenon and “demonstrates how politically charged environments can catalyze philanthropic behavior.”
While immigrant-serving nonprofits were in the middle-of-the-pack in 2014, aid steadily grew and by 2019 they had become one of the most well-funded categories of giving, the researchers found. While the migrant nonprofits received a collective $2.9 billion dollars in 2006, that number grew to $6.7 billion dollars in 2019.
It’s a good bet that migrant serving law firms will have plenty of work over at least the next four years. If the past is prologue, those firms will experience increased donations with which to handle the increased work.
darryll k. jones