To get your initiative started:

• Friends of Welcoming, Welcoming America’s on-line engagement tool, this site has interactive activities and tools for individuals and groups.  You can even earn points and prizes as you take action on the site.

• Quick Start Organizing Tool: Designed for prospective affiliates but useful to any group, this tool will help you to begin your work by asking why you want to do this work, what you want to do, who you want to engage and when you will get your first tasks done.

• Building a Nation of Neighbors Video Modules: This video series introduces you to the various elements of the Welcoming model, through story-based tools. The module, which was developed by Active Voice, in association with the BeCause Foundation, was adapted from the documentary Welcome to Shelbyville, produced and directed by Kim A. Snyder.

• Affiliate Introduction Packet: This guide takes you through the steps to starting your own Welcoming initiative!

• Welcoming America Dialogue Guide: This guide is a tool that was developed by the Public Conversations Project for Welcoming America. This will help you plan a dialogue, which Welcoming America believes is a key part of any Welcoming initiative.

• Receiving Communities Initiative Toolkit: This tool provides an overview of strategies to engage the broader community in an immigrant integration context and offers numerous examples of projects throughout the country.

• Welcoming America Communications Toolkit: This tool helps affiliates or other groups interested in conducting strategic communications campaigns to identify an audience, develop messages and engage targeted audiences.

• Welcoming Committee Members and Partners Identification Tool: This tool helps affiliates and other groups to identify and engage members of a Welcoming Committee, which forms the leadership structure of most welcoming initiatives.
• Welcoming America Economic Messaging Toolkit: This tool is intended to help advocates for immigrant integration communicate how welcoming our immigrant neighbors can be a force for economic growth.

• Sample Work Plan: This will help affiliates and other groups plan their actions over a 12-month period in an organized way that clearly connects actions to the overall goals you hope to accomplish. Please note that the goals noted are examples and should be adapted to fit your community.

• Two reports by initiatives supported by Welcoming America, the Global Detroit Report and the Welcome Dayton Plan, are useful tools to understand how communities are developing comprehensive “immigrant friendly city” strategies to engage the full community in welcoming newcomers.

• For more tools, visit the following pages:
  • Visit our North Carolina affiliate’s YouTube page
  • For news articles that have been published about Welcoming America, visit the press page.
  • For posters that local campaigns have developed, visit the posters page.