Every year, more institutions decide they want to work with diaspora communities. A foundation wants to reach donors with ties to the regions it funds. A company wants to understand a market it serves in two countries at once. A government agency wants to partner with professionals who move expertise across borders. The intention is strong, and the next requirement is a strategy. Outreach that begins with a single event, newsletter, or partnership often struggles to grow beyond it.
According to the International Organization for Migration’s World Migration Report 2024, an estimated 281 million people lived outside their country of birth in 2020. Add their children and grandchildren who maintain ties to an ancestral homeland, and diaspora communities become one of the largest and most connected constituencies any institution can engage. They invest time, talent, and treasure across borders every day, and every one of those investments deserves a partnership built to match it.
A diaspora engagement strategy gives that partnership a structure. It defines why your institution is engaging, who you are engaging, how you will work together, and how both sides will know it is working. Here are the five steps we use with institutions at The Diaspora Academy.
Step 1: Start With a Clear Mandate
Diaspora engagement succeeds when it serves a goal your institution already holds. Before any outreach, your leadership team should answer three questions. What outcome do we want diaspora partnership to advance? Which part of our mission does it strengthen? Who inside our institution owns this work?
A clear mandate keeps diaspora engagement from becoming a side project that depends on one enthusiastic staff member. It also gives diaspora partners something concrete to respond to. Diaspora leaders receive many invitations, and they commit their time to the ones with a defined purpose and a real role for them.
Step 2: Map Your Diaspora Stakeholders
Every diaspora community contains many voices: established organizations, professional associations, faith and cultural institutions, young founders, philanthropists, and informal networks known mainly through word of mouth. Diaspora mapping identifies who these stakeholders are, where they are located, what they already invest in, and how they connect to one another.
There are a number of factors to consider, including generation, geography, and gender. A first-generation professional association and a second-generation founders’ network may share a country of origin and hold very different priorities. Mapping these differences early helps your institution choose partners who fit your mandate and build a strategy with a broad base of diaspora voices.
Step 3: Design the Partnership Model
With a mandate and a map in hand, your institution can decide how it will work with diaspora partners. Some institutions fund diaspora organizations directly. Others co-design programs, invite diaspora experts onto advisory boards, or build platforms that connect diaspora professionals with opportunities in their ancestral homeland.
The strongest models give diaspora partners a defined role in decisions, from planning through evaluation. When we partnered with the International Organization for Migration on work serving the Nigerian diaspora community, IOM described the final product as useful to the donor and to the larger Nigerian diaspora community, the two audiences the work set out to serve. Co-design takes more time at the start, and it produces programs that diaspora communities trust and return to.
Step 4: Build Accountability on Both Sides
Trust is the foundation of every lasting diaspora partnership, and accountability is how trust grows. Diaspora communities place their trust in institutions that report back, share decisions, and follow through. Your strategy should name the commitments your institution makes and the way it will share progress.
Practical accountability looks like regular updates to diaspora partners, shared decision points, transparent use of funds, and clear contacts on both sides. It also means listening when partners raise concerns. Institutions that report back consistently earn deeper participation over time.
Step 5: Measure What Diaspora Partners Value
Institutions tend to measure reach: attendance, followers, or dollars raised. Diaspora partners also value outcomes in their communities and in their ancestral homeland, such as jobs created, skills transferred, policies changed, or programs that outlast the initial grant.
A strong measurement plan tracks both. Define a small set of indicators with your diaspora partners at the start, collect data throughout, and share results with everyone who contributed. Measurement then becomes part of the relationship, and it gives your leadership the evidence it needs to sustain and expand the work.
Where Institutions Go From Here
The Migration Policy Institute and the International Organization for Migration surveyed 62 national governments for their 2012 handbook on diaspora engagement, Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development, by Kathleen Newland and Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias. It remains a foundational guide in the field, and our own work with institutions points to the same conclusion: diaspora engagement works best when it is strategic, sustained, and built with diaspora communities from the start.
Diaspora communities are ready partners. Institutions that arrive with a clear mandate, a real map, and a commitment to accountability build partnerships that last, and those partnerships produce results on both sides of every border they cross.
🚀 Ready to take the next step? Enroll in the Diaspora Leadership Program at thediasporaacademy.com/dlp.
👉🏾 Want tailored strategy? Book a consulting session at thediasporaacademy.com/consulting.
