Press Releases

When Hispanic Federation was founded, our purpose was clear: support Latino-led community-based organizations in New York City. In the quarter century since, we have expanded not only our scope of work, but our reach. In 2006, we launched a satellite office in Washington D.C. In 2012, we did the same in Connecticut. This June, we opted for a warmer and much-needed home in Florida.
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Earlier this month we awarded more than $350,000 in capacity-building grants to 20 Latino community-based organizations. Capacity-building support for Latino grassroots service providers and advocates? Well, YES, that's what we do! Click here to find out more about these twenty amazing organizations and the funding we're grateful to provide them.

Here are all 2015 CORE awardees. Please join us in celebrating them!
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Earlier this month we awarded more than $350,000 in capacity-building grants to 20 Latino community-based organizations. Capacity-building support for Latino grassroots service providers and advocates? Well, YES, that's what we do! Click here to find out more about these twenty amazing organizations and the funding we're grateful to provide them.

Here are all 2015 CORE awardees. Please join us in celebrating them!
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October 22, 2015 (New York, NY) – Hispanic Federation has issued the following statement in response to the Obama Administration’s just released Roadmap for Congressional Action on Puerto Rico. Today, Antonio Weiss, Counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, will testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the Administration’s plan for action.
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Puerto Rico and its more than 3.5 million residents are in crisis. As economic and financial conditions have worsened in recent months, we have partnered with community, government, philanthropic, labor and academic leaders and institutions from across the United States and the island to form a national effort to support Puerto Rico. Our message is clear: Millions of American citizens in Puerto Rico are in danger of losing much of what they have unless our federal government acts with bold purpose to stabilize and grow the island’s economy. The time for action is now.
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Within the first decade, the Hispanic Federation’s CORE (Community Organization Resource Expansion) Initiative was established to help support Latino nonprofits with grants for core operating expenses. Whether it was underwriting the costs of a financial audit or supporting a construction project to make an agency’s building accessible and efficient, the CORE Initiative provided grants that private philanthropy and government funders typically eschewed. “The CORE Initiative was designed to provide our agencies with the financial support for projects they needed but would have difficulty funding from traditional sources,” said Hispanic Federation President José Calderón. “Some of these projects weren’t attention-getting but they were critical to the success of our agencies.” HF’s signature grant-making program is central to the Federation’s mission of fortifying Hispanic nonprofits.

This year, the Hispanic Federation has awarded $368,000 to 20 member agencies to support their core operations. Among this year’s grant recipients are local and national agencies from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Here are all 2015 CORE awardees. Please join us in celebrating them!
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Entre Familia is a series of workshops providing member agency staff with capacity-building trainings and professional development opportunities. The trainings are offered to ensure that our members and grantees are receiving the latest information about the nonprofit industry’s best practices. Expert facilitators, including HF senior staff members, engage participants with information vital to the growth and sustainability of our nonprofit community. Workshops cover topics such as event planning, fundraising, financial management, communications, information management, board development and more.
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There are few issues as important and as complex in the Latino community as college readiness, retention and graduation. Latino young people face persistent systemic barriers that prevent them from attaining a college degree, resulting in the lowest educational attainment level of any group in the U.S. Only 14.5 percent of Latinos aged 25 and older had earned a B.A. degree and only four percent have completed graduate or professional degree programs. On average Latino students arrive on campus with less academic preparation, less social and monetary capital, and more fiscal challenges. As a result, they are also more likely to take a longer (and less certain) route to a college degree, often attending community college before moving to a four-year institution. These challenges are also more likely to make Latinos dropout along the way, behavior that is strikingly similar to non-Latinos from low socio-economic backgrounds, who are also less likely to persist to a B.A. degree.
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On September 3rd, Hispanic Federation and a group of more than 30 Latino community-based organizations from throughout New York City met with Mayor Bill de Blasio to talk discuss some of the key challenges facing our communities.
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Asthma is at crisis levels in Latino communities. Latinos have disproportionately high rates of emergency room visits, hospital admissions and deaths caused by the disease. In New York City, asthma causes havoc in Latino communities from the Bronx to Newark, New Jersey. This month, Hispanic Federation is fighting back against asthma. In partnership with AstraZeneca, through its media networks and family of community-based organizations, HF aims to implement a community education and advocacy campaign, Hispanic Lung Health Education Campaign. The campaign kicks off on September 17, 2015 with a week-long Hispanic Asthma Call to Action when HF will activate 12 member agency sites across New York City and North New Jersey (Essex and Hudson counties), as designated asthma resource centers for Hispanics.
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HF was founded in 1990 after a study highlighted inequities facing both low-income Latinos and the nonprofits which serve them. And while Latinos have scored notable demographic, economic and social advances since then, 2015 finds Hispanics, especially low-income, low-skill Latinos still facing many serious challenges. Latinas, for instance, continue to experience disproportionate reproductive health disparities as compared to the general population of women in the United States, yet are not fully engaged in fighting for their reproductive and health access rights. And Latino and immigrant low-income, low-skilled workers in New York City face significant institutional and human barriers to finding employment.

Back in 1990, the Ford Foundation was one of our most important partners. That partnership began a new chapter this past June, when the foundation made a historic, two-year investment of $500,000 in the HF’s general operations.
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Whether it’s the local bodega or barbershop, runaway energy costs can eat into profits for small businesses. That means less money to grow businesses and hire more workers. From 2014 through the beginning of 2015, Hispanic Federation partnered with Con Edison, the Office of NYS Senator Adriano Espaillat, and the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to help small businesses throughout Washington Heights and Inwood lower their energy costs. Local businesses received free consultations on controlling energy costs through Con Edisons’s energy-saving experts and direct financial assistance for the installation of energy-efficient equipment.
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Many of the most important issues facing Latino communities are being debated in Washington, D.C. That’s why Hispanic Federation has made a commitment to have a strong presence on Capitol Hill over the past decade. Our presence is about to get stronger. Last week, Hispanic Federation President José Calderón announced that Richard Morales would be HF’s new National Director of Advocacy. Rich will manage HF’s Washington, D.C. office with a focus on developing and implementing the organization’s federal legislative priorities.
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3.5 million American citizens are living on the island of Puerto Rico, as it faces its worst economic crisis in more than a century. If unable to restructure its debts, the island will descend into an economic crisis that will wipeout savings, pensions and compromise its economic viability for generations to come. Please consider signing and sharing our petition today to urge the Obama administration to take action on Puerto Rico.

3,5 millones de ciudadanos estadounidenses que viven en la isla de Puerto Rico enfrentan la peor crisis económica en más de un siglo. Si no se le permite a Puerto Rico reestructurar su deuda, la isla descenderá en una crisis económica que hará desaparecer los ahorros, pensiones y poner en peligro su viabilidad económica para las generaciones venideras. Por favor firme y comparta nuestra petición hoy para exigirle al gobierno de Obama a que tome acción para ayudar a Puerto Rico.
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On July 1, 2015, Kate Steinle tragically lost her life in San Francisco through a senseless act perpetrated by an evil individual. That individual happened to be an undocumented immigrant. In the aftermath of Steinle’s tragic death, anti-immigrant legislators in Congress have sought to use her murder as a political wedge to push through legislation that targets immigrants. They have focused especially on punishing cities across the country that offer sanctuary from the most onerous federal immigration laws.
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With so many challenges facing the Latino communities of the mainland United States, one might think that Latino leaders should avoid getting involved in Puerto Rico’s complex economic crisis. But the truth is that the challenges facing Puerto Rico’s economy not only affect the 3.5 million United States citizens who live on the island or the 5 million American citizens of Puerto Rican descent living in the mainland U.S. No, it affects all 55 million Latinos and indeed, the nation itself.
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Last year Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered all agencies to begin aggressively tackling income inequality. In this spirit, the Hispanic Federation presents its 2015 policy paper Growth with Equity: Meeting the Workforce Development Needs of Latinos in New York City. It is a rethinking of the city’s workforce development services as well as a launching pad for ideas on how to economically uplift Latino and other struggling New Yorkers.
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