San Diego Diplomacy Council

When business, government, nonprofit and academic leaders from around the world come to San Diego to connect with their counterparts through international exchange programs, the relationships they forge become a powerful tool for developing solutions to some of our most complex global challenges. For over 37 years, the SDDC has been making these types of connections possible.

As a premier nonprofit partner of the U.S. Department of State and other international agencies, we administer programs that connect current and future leaders from more than 130 countries with the city of San Diego. Our programs bring first time visitors to our city to initiate discussions between global leaders developing answers to a broad range of community challenges such as economic development, youth and education, counterterrorism, workforce development, social entrepreneurism and innovation, human rights, gender equity, social justice through the arts, tourism sustainability, disease prevention and government transparency.

Local and global leaders who participate in international exchanges benefit from greater knowledge, deeper understanding and more effective collaborations. These shared experiences result in more tourism and economic opportunities as well as a more globally informed, influential and competitive San Diego with a growing number of allies in global markets.

With the experience of a 35-year-old nonprofit, the San Diego Diplomacy Council welcomes more than 600 international visitors and interpreters each year to San Diego. We engage over 1,000 San Diego residents meeting with them to exchange best practices for pressing community issues such as tourism development and trade, health and youth empowerment, education and the arts, environmentalism and entrepreneurism, public safety and human trafficking, security and social services. These international visitors come from Asia, Latin America, Middle East, Europe, and Africa and from more than 130 developing and developed countries around the world to meet with our neighborhood and community partners regarding global issues.

Collaboration is a large aspect of our work, primarily because we are responsible for creating professional meetings over a large spectrum of topics. Our International visitors are leaders in the areas of politics, business, religion, non-profit management or education. We collaborate with San Diego leaders within the same genre.

We have active, working relationships with the following charitable organizations: San Diego Human Dignities Foundation, Interfaith Community Services, Reality Changers, The AjA Project, City of San Diego, Commission on Gang Prevention and Intervention, San Diego Youth Services, National Conflict Resolution Center, MANA de San Diego, Girls, Inc., Welcome Home Ministries, Second Chance, Project Concern International, Survivors of Torture International, Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, Border Angels and many, many more.

SDDC also works actively with all local Universities, US. Coast Guard, Marines and Navy and the U.S. Border Patrol.

In conclusion, the impact of our work is far reaching. As an employer of a thriving nonprofit we also provide training for 31 college and professional interns, 4 staff and hundreds of volunteers while bringing almost $2.7 Million (1.8 unleveraged) to our local economy through year round tourism, hotels, transportation, meals, shopping, cultural activities and sightseeing.

When business, government, nonprofit and academic leaders from around the world come to San Diego to connect with their counterparts through international exchange programs, the relationships they forge become a powerful tool for developing solutions to some of our most complex global challenges.

SDDC coordinates over 3,000 professional meetings between our visiting leaders and San Diego city residents each year. These meetings provide opportunities for local residents to build long-standing business and personal relationships with influential leaders around the world. This work results in the following impacts:

• We prepare young international professionals and entrepreneurs to be competitive in the global workforce
• We equip emerging leaders to solve increasingly complex challenges facing our interconnected world
• We promote local economy and tourism
• We promote cross-cultural engagement and challenge negative perceptions of United States overseas
• We encourage our local community to participate in citizen diplomacy
• We help to raise san Diego's international profile

Over 200 current and former Heads of State, 1500 cabinet-level ministers, and many other distinguished world leaders in government and the private sector are alumni of the program. In addition to providing mutually beneficial professional exchanges, we are seeking to improve participants' perceptions of the United States and our people, customs, and government.

No other organization in San Diego brings the same quality and quantity of international visitors to our city on a weekly basis. SDDC has an exclusive partnership with several international exchange agencies including:

U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP): In recent worldwide polls, US ambassadors consistently rated this program the most useful public diplomacy tool of all State Department programs.
Open World Leadership Program: This program is sponsored by U.S. Congress. Our most recent delegation was a group of influential leaders from Moldova, with the theme of Economic and Business Development.
World Learning Youth Delegations: the SDDC has hosted teachers and students to San Diego in the past who connect with local youth and return to their home countries encouraging future visits and tourism with their families returning to our region.
Fulbright Scholars Program: SDDC recently hosted 75 Fulbright Scholars from around the world for a three day symposium.

While the San Diego Diplomacy Council has an outstanding reputation for delivering high quality programs, the organization believed that we could enhance our program services through a variety of outreach efforts. First, the organization created our first alumni outreach program. The organization now captures email addresses from all visiting delegates and invites them to join our newly created alumni Facebook page. To date, we have 220 Facebook followers and have given alumni a place to stay in touch with one another and with our agency. Second, the SDDC, in partnership with Live a Great Story created a video for social media called “Fighting for Venezuela: Daniel Fermin". We were overwhelmed by the positive online response to the video with over 60K Facebook views and 1.6K shares and counting, the video has elicited an outpouring of support for IVLP participant Daniel and Venezuelans pushing for change. Last, SDDC has focused on recognizing our subject matter experts in a more visible and robust manner. Just recently, the SDDC named the Port of San Diego our Partner agency of the year for the tremendous job that they have done hosting and meeting with our IVLP visitors.

SDDC is extremely pleased with our efforts to attract and execute effective custom programs. In the past year we have executed 14 custom programs resulting in over $75,000 in administration fees. For perspective, the 12 months prior the SDDC only ran 5 custom programs with $15,000 in Admin fees. These custom programs have increased the diversity of programs and our funding resources and have created additional organizational sustainability for ongoing cost sharing of IVLP programs.

The organization has worked diligently in creating and establishing partnerships with international organization and our local non-profit partners. We have established relationships with the Regional Economic Development Corporation, World Trade Center, Consular Corps, German American Chamber of Commerce, Port of San Diego and the Airport Authority as well as many elected city officials such as Congressman Juan Vargas, Congresswoman Susan Davis, County Board of Supervisor Ron Roberts, County Board of Supervisor Dave Roberts as well as many city councilman. We have recently established formal partnership ties through Business Membership with Sempra International, the Bristol Hotel and BD. These official Business Memberships bring an additional $5,000 a year to our organization but have also resulted in sponsorship of our events and ticket and table purchases. For the first time in our history, we have created a Reserve account.

We have not yet diversified our revenue as much as we would like and therefore, have not been able to build on our staff capacity.