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CIVIC ENGAGEMENT Moving from Exclusion to Belonging 241 Attending events, belonging to religious institutions, and supporting organizations representing their own ethnic, cultural, or religious background were the most common forms of participation for immigrants: “I go to the monastery on a lot of Buddhist holidays. Sometimes we come to a workshop at a church here, to learn to organize the community.”1166 For undocumented immigrants in particular, events within their own cultural or ethnic group are safe, “familiar and relaxed (no immigration presence, no questions asked).”1167 This kind of cultural participation includes both annual celebrations as well as highly organized outreach and support services: “The Karen community – it is amazing to me – they have nine sections, geographic areas, and each section has its own youth and women leaders [in addition to the overall leader], and each new arrival gets visited by all three [leaders]. These programs are all volunteer-based, and they are so well- organized.”1168 The drive for participation and mutual support within their own cultural group has led to a proliferation of immigrant-led organizations: “Everyone wants to start their own 501(c)(3) – they want to offer all services.”1169 These groups face challenges fitting into the existing nonprofit model and receiving the same support as institutions that serve the larger community. One person who assists new nonprofits described the problems as first, “the lack of knowledge of what a non- governmental organization is and all the rules that go with that – application, IRS forms, by-laws, etc. The whole process is cumbersome. The second issue is start-up funds. Who is going to fund small immigrant-led organizations? The fact that their board members are not well connected to people of influence yet means that they don’t have relationships with the funding community or donors.”1170 A member of an immigrant organization described her perception that the larger community was not as supportive of immigrant organizations: “We wanted to rent a church space to use for meetings for a Korean-American group but we were told that it could only be used for church activities. However, they rent the gym to a homeschool group and that is okay. It seems like maybe they just didn’t want the Korean group there.”1171 Despite serving as the primary point of immigrant community participation and support, immigrant-led organizations do not have the same access to funding and other resources as groups that serve the larger community. 1166 Interview 23. 1167 Interview 133. 1168 Interview 145. 1169 Interview 83. 1170 Interview 135. 1171 Interview 92.