How to Empower Your Employees to Be Allies to the Asian American Community

Over the past year, the number of anti-Asian hate incidents has grown dramatically to nearly 3,800. These incidents include verbal harassment, physical assault, civil rights violations, and online harassment, according to Stop AAPI Hate. The report comes at a critical time. Although incidents of hate crimes have caught the nation’s attention over the last year, the murders of six Asian and two white individuals at spas in Atlanta last night has brought the issue into focus. 

Here are a number of ways to help empower your employees to support the Asian American Community:

Highlight Asian American Nonprofits in Your Giving Platform: 
Individuals generally donate to the organizations they already know. By providing a list of nonprofits that support the Asian American community, employees can review a handful of great organizations and choose the ones that resonate with them. Look for organizations that work with different causes in the community, too. 

Stop AAPI Hate tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The Asian Mental Health Project works to combat the stigma of mental illness in Asian communities and make mental health care accessible. The Asian American Legal Defense Fund uses legal advocacy to address critical issues affecting Asian American communities. The Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum is dedicated to strengthening and improving health care access, quality, and equity. Be sure to include local nonprofits as well. 

Start a Matching Grants Campaign: 
If your company offers a matching grant, consider boosting the match for those that donate to AAPI nonprofits for a certain period of time. During the summer, one of our clients who usually offers a 1-to-1 match, increased the match to 2-to-1 for nonprofits that supported the racial justice movements taking place.
Employees who may not have donated before because they didn’t have much to give were inspired as they watched their $5 donation turn into a $15 donation.

Provide Educational Opportunities for Employees:
Although your company’s Asian Employee Resource Group (ERG) probably has many events planned for Asian American Heritage Month in May, you can support their work by providing extra funding for educational programming such as conversations with prominent nonprofit leaders that support the Asian American Community in your area. Choose a few events that they have planned to highlight through your internal communications whether that’s via email or intranet. If you don’t have an Asian American ERG, perhaps your group for bibliophiles would enjoy reading Chinese in America by Iris Chang. Those who prefer movies might appreciate the PBS documentary “Asian Americans”. 

Broaden Your Definition of Volunteering:
Companies that offer paid time off to volunteer expanded the definition of volunteering at the beginning of the pandemic to ensure that everyone could choose a form of volunteering that worked for them. In March 2020, this meant bringing groceries to home-bound seniors. Now, this may mean helping Asian American store owners repair their shops after they were tagged with hurtful language. Other groups, like Compassion in Oakland, have recruited volunteers to walk with Asian American seniors when they’re out and about in their neighborhoods.


If you’d like to plan a volunteer event for your employees, the Give To Get team can help. Review our service offerings here.