Making Welcoming A Social Norm for 25 Million Americans
Summary
In 2024, Welcoming America committed to engaging and certifying 50 cities and counties as Welcoming Communities by 2026. Coinciding with the nation’s 250th anniversary, this project will ensure that an estimated 25 million Americans in places large and small, urban and rural live in welcoming communities. An estimated 5,000 individual stakeholders across the 50 targeted communities will be engaged and consulted in the certification process. Building on a Certified Welcoming program originally launched at CGI a decade ago, this project will embed policy and programmatic roadmaps across targeted cities to establish truly welcoming communities. Participating localities will undergo a rigorous assessment against the Welcoming Standard to earn a seal of certification that enables them to promote themselves as welcoming places and build a competitive advantage. The process utilizes clear metrics to evaluate and demonstrate progress in establishing inclusive and equitable practices and policies that reduce barriers and support economic opportunity, well-being, civic participation, public safety, and belonging.
Approach
By 2026 – the year the United States reaches its 250th anniversary – Welcoming America will certify 50 cities and counties as Welcoming places, ensuring that an estimated 25 million Americans in places large and small, urban and rural live in welcoming communities. As a result, the belonging, well-being and livelihood of all people, including immigrants and refugees,will be seen as vital and will be invested in through Welcoming policies, practices and culture at the local level.
Over the next decade, Welcoming America has set a bold vision of mobilizing a majority of U.S. communities to embed Welcoming Infrastructure – the policies and practices across government and the community that advance civic, social, and economic participation, and belonging for all, including people with migrant backgrounds. Welcoming America’s Certified Welcoming program and its operating framework, the Welcoming Standard, provide a roadmap building truly welcoming communities. The Welcoming Standard sets out the policies, programs, and processes communities must implement in order to consider themselves welcoming. These include, for example, ensuring that people with immigrant backgrounds can connect with US born neighbors, open and grow new businesses, participate more fully in the workforce, access services, learn English, participate civically, such as by serving on boards and commissions, and naturalize as US citizens. Through Certified Welcoming, localities undergo a rigorous assessment against the Welcoming Standard to earn a seal of certification that enables them to promote themselves as welcoming places and build a competitive advantage, while utilizing clear metrics to evaluate and demonstrate progress in establishing inclusive and equitable practices and policies that reduce barriers to participation and support economic opportunity, well-being, civic participation, public safety, and belonging. Collaboration is a crucial building block for effective welcoming infrastructure. Partnering across fields and industries while engaging diverse community members helps create and sustain inclusive policies and environment. An estimated 5,000 individual stakeholders – or more- will be engaged and consulted in the process of certification across the 50 communities targeted by 2026.
Action Plan
Q3/Q4 2024
Announcement at CGI and related promotion; launch of foundational cohort, with goal of 10-15 participants
Announcements of 3-5 certifications
Four audits of municipalities underway
Launch of pilot peer auditor program
Q1/Q2 2025
Announcements of 4-8 certifications
Conduct 10-15 audits of municipalities
Launch of second leadership cohort with 10-15 new participants
Launch of full peer auditor program, allowing us to scale the program by increasing the number of people available to travel to audit
Certified Welcoming places honored at Welcoming Interactive, annual conference in Detroit MI
Q3/Q4 2025
Announcements of 4-8 certifications
Conduct 10-15 audits of municipalities
Launch of second foundational cohort with 10-15 new participants
Assessment and identification of new strategic partners and certification incentives
Q1/Q2 2026
Announcements and promotion of certifications
Conduct 10-15 audits of municipalities
Launch of third leadership cohort with 10-15 new participants
Assessment and updating of peer auditor program
Q3/Q4 2026
Announcements and promotion of certifications, with achievement of 25 new places successfully certified and 10 places successfully recertified, for an overall goal of 50+ places certified by end of 2026
Complete audits of municipalities
Launch of third foundational cohort with 10-15 new participants
Media work around promotion of certification in concert with US 250th Anniversary
Background
Today, millions of people are on the move, displaced by escalating conflict and climate change, and seeking opportunity and upward mobility. Much of the thinking around immigration policy has operated in short-time horizons, focusing on narrow policy windows for achieving much-needed immigration reform or responding to crisis humanitarian events. What these approaches overlook is the opportunity to reimagine and reinvent our approach to the global movement of people and its impact on the economy, politics, and community life – both in the U.S. and globally.
The potential ahead is to build a movement that brings together social and economic forces to create a truly welcoming America – one in which upward mobility, dignity, and belonging are no longer a function of race, origin, or zip code and people who move are broadly recognized as “us” rather than “them,” as contributors rather than as a threat. Since its founding in 2009, Welcoming America has been a national leader, operating a long game to shift the underlying beliefs and behaviors, community by community, reaching for a critical mass of welcoming communities that can tip us toward welcoming as a broad social norm. Grounded in the leadership of communities, Welcoming America connects, supports, and amplifies those leading the place-based work of addressing systemic disparities and discrimination and building welcoming infrastructure in their communities.
Building on our successful CTA launched a decade ago to mobilize local governments toward welcoming policy and practice, this CTA looks to meet the current moment by accelerating and scaling Certified Welcoming – an initiative that draws on the success of standards, accountability and positive incentives from the sustainability field to apply these principles toward immigration and economic opportunity for all, by providing a clear pathway, organizing tool and reward for places that adopt, sustain and celebrate inclusive policies and practices.
Progress Update
Partnership Opportunities
Welcoming America seeks opportunities for amplifying the social, economic and civic benefits of Certified Welcoming through earned and paid media, and through partnerships that help to reinforce a narrative that connects welcoming action to shared prosperity and democracy. Welcoming America also seeks resources and partners that can help to incentivize good actors by reinforcing the value of Certified Welcoming for trade, tourism, investment, economic prosperity, and civic health., Welcoming America would welcome opportunities to support other organizations in identifying the role they can play in being supportive partners in a community-wide Welcoming agenda, a role we have seen Chambers of Commerce, community philanthropy, cultural institutions, economic development agencies, service providers (e.g. YMCA) and issue advocates engage in, with significant benefit to their work and ability to address disparities, leadership gaps, and polarization. Welcoming America is also developing new tools connecting climate resilience and Welcoming infrastructure and welcome opportunities to share those.