Giving Compass' Take:

• Ryan M. Eller explains how immigrations funders can maximize their impact by working toward the long-term solution of fostering cultural change through storytelling. 

• How should funders balance the short- and long-term need of immigrants? 

• Learn how narratives can change systems. 

The world is looking to the southern border, watching children abducted from their parents.

Everybody is rushing to take action. Everybody is scrambling in this urgent moment to stop the bleeding and make sure that we end the practice of family separation and child detention.

With the eyes of the world focused on immigrants, these media moments are critical. They are the moments that make people care.

But the truth is: We cannot subsist in perpetuity under a rapid response mindset. There has to be a larger aim.

When we scramble to stop the bleeding, it has to be with the knowing that there is something more coming: a real cure; a healing that will make it so that we will not have to keep scrambling forever.

At Define American, we believe that cure is to fundamentally improve our cultural attitudes towards the movement of human beings from one place to another.

We do this by harnessing the power of stories and embedding those narratives strategically into forms of media, primarily news and entertainment media.

A recent poll found that the TV news station someone watches is a stronger predictor of their feelings about immigrants than their partisan political affiliation.

Read the full article about investing in longterm solutions by Ryan M. Eller at National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.