* Seeks to “empower and advance the Hispanic community” through grantmaking
* Engages in voter-registration drives, congressional lobbying, leadership training, and issue advocacy
The Hispanic Federation (HF) was established in 1990 when a group of Latino leaders created the Hispanic Federation of New York City, which consisted of six member agencies. Today HF is national in its scope. To view a comprehensive list of its nearly 100 member agencies—one of which is LatinoJustice PRLDF—click here.
HF issues grants to a broad network of Latino nonprofit groups “serving the most vulnerable members of the Hispanic community.” It also “advocates nationally” on various key issues through the following programs:
1) The Civic Engagement program seeks to increase the participation of Latinos—who overwhelmingly support Democratic policies and candidates—in the American political process. Over the years, this initiative has registered hundreds of thousands of Latino voters and coordinated many “get-out-the-vote” campaigns targeting that demographic.
2) The Federal Advocacy program consists of several projects that heavily emphasize the role of big government and massive public expenditures:
3) In partnership with the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, HF operates its own Hispanic Leadership Institute which aims to help Latino nonprofit leaders improve their management skills and enhance the effectiveness of their organizations. The overarching objective is to “strengthen institutions that advance the quality of life of the Latino community.”
4) Each year on October 15, HF sponsors a National Latino AIDS Awareness Day to focus public attention on the fact that HIV infection has had “a devastating and disproportionate impact on the Latino community.”
5) The National Latino Funds Alliance was established in 1996 to strengthen Latino involvement in philanthropy.
6) The Reproductive Health program seeks to educate Latino women about parenting and pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, contraceptive use, changes in healthcare legislation, access to abortion services, and disparities in healthcare across racial and ethnic lines.
HF also administers a locally-based Economic Empowerment program committed to “promoting the economic well being of the Latino community” by means of personal finance workshops, business start-up trainings, homeownership classes, and educational initiatives that teach Hispanic Americans how to access credit, capital, and financial services.
HF receives funding from dozens of major corporations and foundations, including such notables as AARP, AT&T, the Aetna Foundation, Bank of America, Capital One, the Citi Foundation, the Coca-Cola Company, Comcast Corporation, Con Edison, Delta Air Lines, the Ford Foundation, Pfizer, Prudential Financial, Southwest Airlines, Time Warner Cable, Univision Communications, the Verizon Foundation, Walmart, Wells Fargo, Western Union, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
For a comprehensive list of HF’s funders, click here.
NOTE:
[1] In April 2013, HF welcomed the introduction of a bipartisan immigration-reform bill in the U.S. Senate, which called for the creation of a 13-year path-to-citizenship for illegal immigrants. Though that waiting period was, by HF’s reckoning, “longer than we would like,” the Federation was pleased by the fact that “for DREAMers and agricultural workers the pathway is shorter.” HF president José Calderón, for his part, was “deeply concerned” by the bill’s “emphasis [on] merit-based immigration over family ties” and its “excessive burdens, border security triggers, and penalties that threaten to keep immigrants in the shadows rather than on a pathway to earned citizenship.”