What Resources Does Welcoming America Offer for Building Welcoming Communities?

Welcoming America offers four main types of resources for communities working on immigrant inclusion and belonging: a framework called the Welcoming Standard that defines what a welcoming place looks like, practical toolkits such as Narrative in Action for framing and storytelling, stories of impact from member communities, and news and blog coverage of local initiatives. These resources are aimed at the nonprofits and local governments that make up the organization's network, and they are most useful to communities that want a structured starting point rather than a one-off event.

The Welcoming Standard: A Definition to Work From

The Welcoming Standard is the organization's framework for what makes a place welcoming. The site describes it as the way Welcoming America defines welcoming places, and it functions as the reference point for communities that want to assess where they stand and set goals. It is also the basis for the Certified Welcoming designation, which communities can earn at different star levels.

Use it when: your community wants a shared definition before committing staff time or budget, or when you need to explain the case for inclusion work to local leaders.

Toolkits for Framing, Messaging, and Storytelling

The most concrete how-to resource listed is Narrative in Action: A Toolkit for Framing, Messaging, and Storytelling in Welcoming Communities. According to the site, it provides step-by-step guidance for building narratives of local belonging — how communities welcome, include, and grow together. It sits under the themes of Connected Communities, Equitable Access, and Government and Community Leadership.

Use it when: you have a program or initiative and need help communicating it — choosing messages, framing the local story, or training staff and volunteers to talk about belonging consistently.

A practical way to apply a storytelling toolkit

1. Input: gather the raw material — who arrived in your community, which local organizations partnered, what changed for residents.
2. Action: work through the toolkit's framing and messaging steps to turn those facts into a narrative rather than a statistics sheet.
3. Expected result: a consistent story your local government and nonprofit partners can repeat in public communications, funding requests, and volunteer recruitment.

A common sticking point is treating storytelling as a communications task only; the toolkit's emphasis on government and community leadership suggests the narrative needs buy-in from the people running programs, not just the people publicizing them.

Stories of Impact: What Other Communities Did

The site publishes stories of impact that show the work in context. One example is Gunnison, Colorado, described as a rural mountain town of about 16,000 residents where local organizations and leaders have been building efforts for connection and belonging. The value of these stories is comparative: a small or rural community can see how another small or rural community approached the work, including the role of seasonal workers and local partnerships.

Use them when: you need to persuade a skeptical local audience, or when your community's size or geography makes national models feel inapplicable.

News, Blog Posts, and Designation Examples

The news and resources section reports on communities reaching milestones — for example, Worcester becoming the 50th Certified Welcoming community, Durham and Durham County achieving a Certified Welcoming designation, and Salem earning a 3-star designation — alongside blog posts such as a recap of Welcoming Week. These posts are useful for seeing the range of community types that pursue certification and for timing your own efforts around shared moments like Welcoming Week.

Choosing Among the Resources

For communities ready to go further, the site also points to the Certified Welcoming designation process and to donating in support of the mission. The most efficient path is usually to read the Welcoming Standard first, then pick the toolkit or peer story that matches your next bottleneck.