Every day, hundreds of Asian Americans head for offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles; New York and Washington, D.C.; and places between with a common goal: to rally support for causes that their groups have identified as particularly important to Asian Americans.

Largely because of them, the first Asian Pacific American Heritage Week was observed two decades ago; and largely because of them, the week has become a month celebrated in metropolitan areas and plenty of smaller towns nationwide. They helped mobilize support across Asian ethnicities to provide reparations to Japanese Americans and citizenship to Amerasian children of the Vietnam War; and they helped spread the word about the deaths of Vincent Chin in 1992 and Kuan Chung Kao in 1997. They have become part of reporters’ Rolodexes, called upon for responses during the fundraising scandals of three years ago and the China spy scandal unfolding today.

They are the thousands of workers who run the thousands of Asian American nonprofits nationwide. But they don’t all look the same.

Diversity exists in how each group regards any given issue, including diversity itself: The Bay Area, for instance, is home to both the Northern California Coalition for Immigrants Rights and the Diversity Coalition for an Immigration Moratorium; the East Coast houses both the progressive National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and the conservative Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce.

Diversity exists, too, in how each group raises money and where that money goes. And in the seventh year of a growth economy, there’s more money around. With a strong economy and galloping stock market increasing portfolio values, U.S. grantmaking institutions contributed more than $19.46 billion to nonprofit organizations in 1998, according to a study done by the Foundation Center; this is a 22-percent increase over 1997 and part of a trend that has seen grants double since 1990.

More people find themselves in a position to give more money -- but the proliferation of groups, many with similar-sounding names, can perplex rather than enlighten.

A MANDATE TO DISCLOSE

Though nonprofit budgetary figures have long been open, to see them has sometimes required that a person show up at the door -- not usually a feasible option if an individual was on the West Coast and the group on the East Coast, or vice versa. Moreover, a photographic memory could be practically essential to making sense of the information, given that no one was required to make copies if requested.

Enter Congress, which through the Tax and Trade Relief Extension Act of 1998 imposed new IRS regulations that require nonprofits as of June 8 to send copies of tax forms that disclose how much an organization takes in, how much it spends and where, and in certain cases, how much it pays its top people.

“It invades their privacy. ...This is intimate information for a person or an organization,” said Richard Lee, a certified public accountant in San Francisco.

“Do you want your tax records public, subject to inspection?” he asked. “The IRS can just send one inspector to audit the books to make sure things are in order, instead of the whole world knowing. And the IRS does do that. They send many auditors to audit nonprofits.”

Lee, however, conceded an important distinction among the groups. “If it’s a public charity, then maybe there’s a point to giving the public the right to inspect. But if it’s a private foundation, then the IRS is abusing their power.”

Indeed, the IRS itself does not hold private foundations that do not take money from the public to the same mandates that it has issued for public, nonprofit charities and other groups classified under Section 501c3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Under the revised rules, those groups must now provide copies of their approved exemption applications and their three most recent annual Form 990 forms via mail or the Internet to anyone who asks in writing. They may charge up to $1 for the first page and 15 cents for each additional page, plus actual postage costs. Groups that do not comply within 30 days may be subject to penalties of $20 per day up to a maximum of $10,000.

To see how well the system was working, AsianWeek reporters have over the past month sent out dozens of requests to a cross section of APA nonprofits nationwide. Less than a dozen have responded with the required copies, which the paper is continuing to seek.

More than a few groups have expressed reluctance. “Nonprofits are defensive,” explained Charles Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, one of the first to provide the forms.

“Why are you asking? What do you want to know about us?” he said in describing a common mentality among groups. Yet he himself said he knew his group had to comply. “I knew that this was coming, and you’re the first one to ask for it.”

Nancy Choy, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, said that so far that she hasn’t gotten many requests for 990 forms, and that no one has contacted her group for assistance on how to comply with requests.

Kim says the only concern he has with the new law is the possibility it may be misused -- a worry that lawmakers have tried to address with narrow clauses that exempt organizations from fulfilling requests clearly motivated by harassment. Said Kim: “If someone who is not supportive of KAC asked, then we’ll be concerned. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

LESS THAN OUR SHARE

Many of the advocates who sent in forms saw the request as an opportunity to get the word out, given that Asian Americans still continue to get a tiny share of the philanthropic pie.

Some directors blame conservative lawmakers. Kim, for example, says he expects that most money will to continue to come from corporations and donations, not public grants.

“Our funding source is very limited,” he said, explaining that because of his group’s advocacy-oriented stance, not much comes from the government. That observation was echoed by David Lee, executive director of the nonpartisan Chinese American Voter Education Committee (CAVEC). “The reason we don’t go after government funding is because there is partisan pressure in the grant-making process,” he explained.

Though it has only two full-timers, CAVEC has been key in registering thousands of San Francisco Chinese Americans, largely with the help of a cadre of volunteers. As he explained: “We keep overhead down and capitalize on the goodwill in the community so that we aren’t overburdened by administrative functions.”

A 1992 report from Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy showed that only 0.2 percent of dollars contributed -- $1 out of every $500 -- between 1983 and 1990 went to APA-oriented nonprofits, even though Asian Americans made up almost 3 percent of the population at that time.

In the Bay Area, things are better, but not by much. A 1996 study by the fund showed that between 1988 and 1993, APA nonprofits got only 0.5 percent of dollars given, even though Asian Americans made up 20 percent of the population, said Gail Kong, whose Asian Pacific American Community Fund sponsored the study.

“This is when we had a growing population, and one-fifth of the Asian children [in the Bay Area] grew up in poverty,” said Kong. “There was a greater need that people didn’t recognize.”

In the past three years, though, Kong said she believes there have been modest gains for the Bay Area’s 150 Asian American service-oriented nonprofits, which help an estimated 170,000 people.

“I think there has been a little movement, meaning new money,” she said. “It has changed a little for the better but not a lot. Agencies are doing more and speaking out on behalf of the community. Our needs are becoming more obvious to people in the public arena.”

The Asian Pacific American Community Fund, which began in 1993 with 58 agencies eligible for grants, has seen that number grow to 74, which Kong said “suggests that things are a little better.” To be eligible, she explained, an agency has to have a minimum budget of $25,000, and it has to “show a level of responsibility and stability.”

But on the national level, “Asian Pacific American communities don’t even register as a blip on the radar screen of the vast majority of foundations in the United States,” said Ford Foundation program officer Jon Funabiki. “AAPIP hasn’t updated that [1992] study since then, but there’s very little reason to believe that the figure has grown in any substantial way.”

That leaves groups like the Asian Counseling & Referral Service in Seattle strapped for cash. “There is always incredible need,” said Development Director Elise Del Rosario. Her group last year served 400 clients, many of whom speak little English and are elderly.

“We are fortunate to acquire additional funding in order to serve more people and add new programs like our citizenship class, which was started two years ago in response to welfare reform. Many refugees who were not citizens were at risk for losing their benefits.”

Del Rosario said 85 percent of their funding comes from public sources, though she is trying to increase individual and corporate support. “Government funding is not always available,” she explained. “What they will fund or can’t fund varies depending on the political pendulum. Therefore, we need to support our programs through other means.”

SEEKING SOLUTIONS

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy’s current leader says Asian Americans themselves must be part of the answer.

“In terms of organized philanthropy, there’s a long way to go for APAs to get their fair share of philanthropic funding,” said AAPIP Executive Director Moira Shek.

“Asians, yes, some major donors are out there, but they’re still few and far between,” said “APAs need to cultivate a culture of caring. We need to encourage philanthropy and giving. Giving is not just limited to wealthy people.”

A big challenge, she said, is to convince individual donors and grant-makers alike to embrace a diverse category that comprises 34 ethnic groups and 300 languages or dialects. Different languages, histories and cultures all impact on Asian Americans’ needs, she said, “so they can’t say by funding one Asian group, we take care of that.”

Thinking outside the box when it comes to fund-raising strategies can pay off. The Korean American Coalition’s Kim said his group has seen budgets grow each year by about $150,000, largely through corporate donations, and he hopes to take the organization nationwide within three years.

CAVEC’s Lee noted that although Asian Americans may not personally be in the position to donate a lot of money, they have used their connections to persuade their employers to do so. PG&E Vice President Kathy Lee, for instance, said she “got us heard on the corporate level,” and her employer is now a major CAVEC contributor.

Funabiki said few nonprofits, including non-Asian American oriented ones, can afford to ignore the growing APA population. “They offer immense resources -- creative individuals, cultural and language skills and even wealth -- that foundations could tap into to help address some of today’s social, economic, educational, health and international problems.”

Shek agreed. “We want to help [mainstream groups] get APA dollars, just as we want to help Asian community funds to get dollars from APA dollars,” she said. “Mainstream organizations have tried to court wealthy APAs. There’s great interest in going after APA money, but the way they go about doing it is not the best way.”

For one thing, she said, more Asian Americans need to be on foundation boards. “There needs to be bridge-building to help them understand their dollars are just as well spent in community organizations. The mainstream...traditional foundations like Ford or Rockefeller... should include APA as trustees.

“Don’t just take our money -- give us decision making power, too. “

HOW THINGS STARTED

As much as Asian American groups have struggled, they have grown, and mightily so, since the first ones were established in the late 1800s and early 1900s, largely to serve immigrants like Misao Tajitsu.

When he came to Seattle generations ago, the grandfather of writer Phil Tajitsu Nash found himself a minority within a minority -- one whose dialect and diet differed from those of Japanese immigrants who had arrived from Osaka or Tokyo. Soon, though, he found the Kagoshima Kenjinkai, a social group comprised of natives from Japan’s southernmost prefecture. Like the Chinese Six Companies in San Francisco and informal Korean keh groups, the Kagoshima Kenjinkai served as a lifeline linking recent immigrants to jobs, housing, social services, doctors and even funeral services.

Such mutual aid associations, which continue to this day, usually do not seek 501c3 tax-exempt status, relying instead on volunteer work and donations solicited from a private list. Unlike decades ago, such groups are no longer the majority -- paralleling in part a more than five-fold increase in Asian American population since 1965, nonprofits have diversified into thousands of organizations with diverse mandates.

In the 1960s and ’70s, a vision of pan-Asian and Asian American coalitions took root among many younger people, especially in the wake of the first Asian Pacific American Heritage Week 20 years ago. Money from individuals was tight -- many people who gave freely to their family association saw little reason to donate to pan Asian American causes. At the same time, government money for the arts, health, social services and other philanthropic activities increased steadily through the 1970s and 1980s. That meant that organizations like the Basement Workshop, an early Asian American arts organization in New York, were relying on government funding by the late ‘70s, even as most individual Japanese American artists in the area continued to seek donations of money and space from Buddhist temples and Christian Churches.

The funding dichotomy inevitably created a wedge for many groups. Members of the Chinatown Planning Council (now the Chinese American Planning Council), for instance, were ostracized by the local community leaders in the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association when the CPC applied for government funds to address health, social service, and mental health issues.

The “we take care of our own” mentality, however, became less and less prominent as the Asian American population grew from less than two million in 1970 to more than six million by 1990. Most, if not all, did not fit the “model minority” stereotype -- like other Americans, Asian Americans needed mental health care, women’s shelters, crisis hotlines.

Now, as crises cross racial and other demographic lines, new alliances are forming. The Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center, created just three years ago through the merger of the Asian AIDS Project and the Living Well Project, serves mostly Asian Americans -- but because of the disparate affect of the disease among gay men, it has forged many links with mostly white gay groups, too.

“They have distrust because of past experiences, or they may be monolingual, or perhaps the health care providers don’t have cultural competency,” said Emily Cabrera, associate director of community health for the API Wellness Center, in describing her clients. “What is clear over the years, people come to us who are not served by mainstream health institutions.”

Part Two of this report is scheduled for late July.