Nearly one in three Bay Area residents are immigrants—neighbors, caregivers, workers, and local leaders who enrich our communities in countless ways. As one of the most diverse regions in the United States, the East Bay has been shaped and strengthened by generations of immigration from around the world. Yet across the region, immigrants face escalating threats, from ICE arrests and workplace raids to the quiet erosion of essential supports such as legal aid, rental assistance, and health care.
Philanthropy has a critical role to play in this moment. East Bay Community Foundation (EBCF) recommends that donors focus on two interconnected strategies:
- Protecting and preparing our neighbors before crisis hits
- Strengthening community ties to resist harm, generate solutions, and grow collective power for the long run.
Over nearly 100 years in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, EBCF has built trusted relationships with leaders and organizations that work closely with immigrant communities. Below, you’ll find information about East Bay organizations on the front lines of this work — and how you can advance a philanthropic strategy rooted in equity, responsiveness, and long-term impact.
A Prepared Community is a Protected Community
In times of crisis and challenge, grassroots interventions and rapid response resources provide a critical lifeline. As part of their work to ensure strong, prepared communities, coalitions like the Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP) and Stand Together Contra Costa operate rapid response hotlines that help mobilize neighbors and volunteers when immigration enforcement actions occur. They also organize “Know Your Rights” trainings, providing residents with legal information and methods to safely observe and document enforcement activity. In the last year, ACILEP responded to over 100 ICE arrests in our local communities and supported residents both before and after enforcement actions.
In the East Bay, these organizations need sustained investment to train volunteers, maintain infrastructure, and support communities in moments of crisis and beyond. Philanthropic support can strengthen operations, expand outreach, increase training capacity, and provide critical staffing to sustain this work.
Community-based organizations like Street Level Health in Oakland, Monument Impact in Contra Costa County, and the Multicultural Institute in Berkeley and Richmond directly support day laborers who face heightened risks. In California, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity at day laborer gathering sites has intensified fear and instability. These groups need flexible funding to expand outreach, deliver essential services, and ensure that the most vulnerable workers have access to protection and resources.
Building Power for the Long Term
While urgent needs require rapid response, long-term change depends on sustained power building across coalitions. This work is rooted in organizing, leadership development, and collective action. EBCF has deep expertise in these funding areas, working toward a system where community organizations can operate sustainably and have the resources to collaborate with each other.
Large, coordinated efforts between groups are essential to achieving big wins. Alameda County United in Defense of Immigrant Rights (ACUDIR), includes groups like the Arab Resource Organizing Center, Filipino Advocates for Justice, My Eden Voice, Mujeres Unidas Activas, and Trabajadores Unidos Workers United. These groups were part of a campaign in 2025 to stop ICE from establishing a detention center at the former Federal Prison in Dublin, as well as efforts to establish “ICE Free Zones” in Alameda County where federal enforcement officers are banned from staging operations.
Being a part of a coalition is additive work – organizations must stretch their time and resources to work at the intersection of issue areas, in addition to their day-to-day responsibilities. ACUDIR, like many coalitions, includes groups that are funded for that collaboration, as well as those that need additional resources to participate in power-building.
With your support, EBCF is able to direct funding to individual organizations as well as the broader coalitions that house their work. By investing in community organizing and power building over the long run, we build critical infrastructure and enable daily acts of resistance.
At EBCF, Giving is Deeply Rooted in Community
The East Bay’s strength has always come from its people — and right now, those people need sustained, flexible support. Preparing communities before crisis, serving those who face the greatest barriers, and building collective power are not separate strategies. They reinforce each other and require long-term investment to take root.
In addition to funding organizations directly, donors can make gifts to EBCF, ensuring resources reach the organizations best positioned to respond — now and in the future. Our deep local relationships mean we can move quickly, adapt as conditions change, and stay accountable to the communities we serve.
Whether they are established community anchors, public-private partnerships, or emerging coalitions, local groups benefit from nimble support. By fostering coordination and trust, we also increase long-term resilience—creating an East Bay where everyone has the economic freedom to dream, heal, and belong.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can support East Bay immigrant communities, EBCF’s team of philanthropic advisors can help you put together a plan and start making an impact today. You can reach us at philanthropy@eastbaycf.org.
More Bay Area Groups Promoting and Defending Immigrant Rights
| Coalitions and Collaboratives | |
| Alameda County Immigration Legal & Education Partnership (ACILEP) | ACILEP is a collaborative program dedicated to protecting and empowering undocumented communities across Alameda County. ACLIEP provides rapid response (Hotline: 510-241-4011), legal services, and community education to ensure that undocumented individuals and their families have access to justice, dignity, and the resources they need to thrive. ACLIEP is anchored by Centro Legal de la Raza. |
| Alameda County United in Defense of Immigrant Rights (ACUDIR) | ACUDIR is a coalition led by and for immigrants that organizes and base-builds in the community to end all deportations, to liberate all immigrants from detention, to end the militarization of the border, and to fight for human rights for all immigrants. It is anchored by Trabajadored Unidos Workers United in the Bay Area. |
| Alameda County Collaborative for Removal Defense (ACCORD) | Alameda County’s collaborative of legal organizations providing removal defense services to Alameda County residents. ACCORD, a collaboration between the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and ACILEP, connects people at risk of immigration detention and in detention with pro bono legal services. |
| Contra Costa Immigrant Rights Alliance (CCIRA) | CCIRA is a coalition of community, faith, advocacy and immigrant-led organizations that formed in the Spring of 2017 to provide a platform to support actions by multiple players across the County. Their mission is to help make Contra Costa a county that welcomes, honors and protects the rights of immigrant members of the community. |
| Faith in Action East Bay (FIAEB) | Faith in Action East Bay builds power for local communities by developing and working with community leaders from across Alameda and Contra Costa counties. FIAB is a multi-faith, multiracial network made up of more than 23 congregations that includes over 25,000 families. |
| Stand Together Contra Costa | Stand Together Contra Costa provides culturally competent, no-cost rapid response support (Hotline: 925-900-5151), legal defense services, and immigrant rights education and training to support families impacted by anti-immigrant policies and practices affecting Contra Costa County residents. |
| Organizations | |
| Arab Resource and Organizing Center | AROC organizes to fight for racial and economic justice and the dignity and liberation of Arab and Muslim communities. AROC serves poor and working class Arabs and Muslims across the San Francisco Bay Area, while organizing to overturn racism, forced migration, and militarism. |
| Bay Resistance | Bay Resistance is a network of community organizations, unions and neighborhood groups organizing to defend communities and defeat fascism in the Bay Area. |
| Centro Legal De La Raza | Founded in 1969, Centro Legal de la Raza is a legal services agency protecting and advancing the rights of low-income, immigrant, Black, and Latinx communities through bilingual legal representation, education, and advocacy. |
| Filipino Advocates for Justice | Since 1973, FAJ has been an advocate for immigrant and civil rights by providing direct services, developing leaders, and organizing and advocating on issues important to the Filipino community as a historically underserved ethnic minority in the Bay Area. |
| Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity (IM4HI) | Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity is a statewide California organization that connects clergy and people of faith to the work of social justice. In Northern California, the coalition coordinates and supports several networks of local faith communities engaged in immigrant justice. |
| Monument Impact | Monument Impact serves as an advocate and resource in Contra Costa County that guides, educates, and connects low-wage families and communities. Rooted in the Monument Corridor of Concord, the group provides in-house programs and works directly with residents through door-to-door outreach, workshops, and advocacy at city council meetings |
| Mujeres Unidas y Activas | Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) is an organization of Latina and Indigenous immigrant women with the mission to grow their personal and community power to achieve social and economic justice. MUA is a founding member of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, led the efforts to pass the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in California, and spearheaded the movement to stop family separations and build a pathway to citizenship for all immigrants. |
| Multicultural Institute | Since 1991, the Multicultural Institute has worked with different immigrant communities in three areas; Alameda, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties. Its core constituents include day laborers, low-income immigrant adults and youth, and immigrants from Mexico and Central America. |
| My Eden Voice | My Eden Voice builds community power to win campaigns that advance racial, housing, economic, language, and environmental justice for the urban unincorporated Alameda County communities. It was founded in 2018 to unite grassroots community organizations in the Eden Area communities of Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo, and Hayward Acres. |
| Reimagine Richmond | Reimagine Richmond is a movement of people reimagining community safety in Richmond through organizing, researching, and educating. Their immigration services include neighborhood patrols, verification of ICE sightings, and know your rights trainings. |
| Street Level Health | Street Level Health Project is an Oakland-based community center dedicated to improving the wellbeing of underinsured, uninsured, and recently arrived immigrants in Alameda County. |
| Trabajadores Unidos Workers United | TUWU is a regional Bay Area immigrant worker center that stands at the intersection of economic racial justice and immigrant rights. TUWU believes in upholding the power of working-class immigrants through forging class consciousness and growing the leadership of low-wage immigrant workers. |