Sunday Drives with The Grant Plant* – New Mexico Dream Team
Join us as we check in with one of our clients to see how grant funding is helping their organization and its work grow.*
We chatted with Co-Director Eduardo Esquivel at the New Mexico Dream Team (NMDT). Based in Albuquerque, “The New Mexico Dream Team is a statewide network committed to create power for multigenerational, undocumented, LGBTQ+, and mixed status families towards liberation.” Its vision centers on using “trainings and leadership development…to engage our community and allies, in becoming leaders using an intersectional, gender, and racial justice lens—to develop and implement an organizing and advocacy infrastructure for policy change fighting to dismantle systematic oppression.”
When asked how grant funding has contributed to NMDT’s ability to strengthen the communities in which they work, Mr. Esquivel expressed that grant funding is at the core of most change created by NMDT, highlighting that 80% of NMDT’s budget comes from grant funding. In fact, when NMDT was founded in 2014 it was grant funding that allowed three organizations (UNM Dream Team, Santa Fe Dreamers in Action, and NM Highlands University MEChA) to come together to establish what is currently the New Mexico Dream Team.
When now Co-Director Mr. Esquivel joined NMDT in 2015, it was as a student who was interested in participating in one of their grant funded programs: UndocuHealing. The Undocuhealing project “was started to facilitate the incorporation and daily practice of self-love, community healing, and wellness.” Today, ten years later, thanks to support from grant funding, the UndocuHealing project still gives participants a place to take care of each other and heal.
Mr. Esquivel emphasized the long-term, multi-year investments from grantor organizations such as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, used to underwrite core operations and sustain projects such as Undocuhealing, has allowed NMDT to create real change in communities in New Mexico. While Mr. Esquivel knows that managing grant funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other funders requires time and effort on the side of the non-profit, he sees the results of programs funded by grants as “powerful.” In addition to running programs like UndocuHealing, NMDT, through grant funding, has been able to get legislation passed at the state and local level which also directly benefits its members. For example, NMDT was a critical champion of the Professional and Occupational Licensing for All bill in 2020, making New Mexico a more inclusive state by extending licensing to the immigrant population. Having these types of substantive wins, especially for undocumented immigrant youth who have often felt they must be silent in policy and practice matters, is monumental, and the positive ripple effects are felt for years as this generation develops into leadership.
Mr. Esquivel says one key to NMDT’s success with grant work is the focus on relationship building with funders, which NMDT has prioritized over their ten years. Funders now know the organization and its work, and they often are “moving in step with us and let us lead.” Mr. Esquivel credits all the work The Grant Plant does behind the scenes to research and find pertinent grantor matches for NMDT. Especially, Mr. Esquivel values that The Grant Plant helps NMDT find grantors they wouldn’t be able to find on their own.
From working with The Grant Plant, Mr. Esquivel offers the following words of wisdom for grant seekers, “It’s very important to step outside the box. Be creative when seeking funding for grants.” He has appreciated The Grant Plant encouraging NMDT to apply for grants from different sources NMDT might not have seen as viable on their own as he has seen those funders welcome work being done in new and exciting ways. Also, Mr. Esquivel encourages other non-profits to be persistent and build relationships with funders to get long-term funding which sustains substantial growth for both the non-profits and the communities they serve.
Whether it’s actually planting on a farm or running a non-profit nourished by grant funding, we at The Grant Plant know change and growth often occur slowly, yielding benefits to communities in the present and for many years to come. Congrats to the New Mexico Dream Team for ten successful years of purpose-driven, grant-funded work!
* “To Plant Today is to Believe in Tomorrow.” Even before I started work at The Grant Plant, I knew the truth in that statement. Growing up on a small family farm, Sunday afternoons were reserved for “Sunday Drives” with my dad. My sister and I would pile in the back seat of the car, plastering our small faces up against the back window on the driver’s side, and my dad would drive very slowly up and down the highway and dirt roads around our farm, just to look at our crops to see the growth the stalks of corn and rows of soybeans were making. We at The Grant Plant decided to do our own version of a “Sunday Drive” and check in with one of our clients to see how grant funding is helping their organization and its work grow.
Contact: Monique Schmidt, Resource Development Officer, [email protected]
This post was filed under: Clients