Donald Trump’s victory has brought an influx of cash, volunteers to some groups

Nov. 20--In the early morning hours of Nov. 9, New York businessman Donald Trump clinched the presidency.

By that afternoon, the American Civil Liberties Union had raised more than $940,000 in online donations.

And those dollars kept coming, topping more than $7 million as of Thursday.

The ACLU is one of several organizations to note a dramatic spike in donations and phone calls in the wake of Trump's election, most of them from people concerned that the president-elect's stated positions on immigration and health care could infringe on rights. Some of those concerns also have led to violent protests elsewhere and a reinforcement of conduct codes in schools in Guilford County.

"The response has been overwhelming, just the number of people who have called or emailed to say, 'I want to volunteer,'" said Mike Meno, a spokesman for the ACLU of North Carolina. "We've seen so many more offers of support and people wanting to join."

The ACLU is a non-partisan organization that works to protect civil liberties, such as voting rights or freedom of speech. The organization, which opened its North Carolina office in 1965, has challenged every president in recent history, but officials said it never has experienced an outpouring of support as large as the groundswell in the past two weeks.

"In recent memory, the only comparable time would be the in days after 9/11, when there were tremendous concerns that the government, in the name of national security, would attack civil liberties," Meno said.

"Now we're seeing a huge amount of interest for the ACLU constitutional analysis of many of the positions President-elect Trump put forward in his campaign," Meno said.

Donations to the national ACLU from North Carolina residents typically get split between the parent organization and the state office in Raleigh, where organizers have also noted an uptick in requests from locals wanting to help.

There also has been an increase of support on social media, Meno said. In the first 10 days after the election, the state organization's Facebook page recorded more than 1,000 new followers.

"We've heard from people across the state who not only want to join the ACLU and become more active," he said, "but become more active specifically in their own communities."

The response has been similar for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Nationally, the organization has received upwards of 200,000 donations since the election, although officials have not disclosed the monetary value.

A little more than 20 percent of those donations were made in the name of Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a former congressman and the governor of Indiana who vehemently opposes abortion rights. While serving in the House of Representatives, Pence sponsored six constitutional amendments to defund Planned Parenthood.

He will, according to protocol, receive a thank-you note for each of those donations.

In North Carolina, Planned Parenthood has recorded a 15 percent spike in online donations, said Sarah Eldred, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.

"We have also had a pretty huge uptick in people reaching out to volunteer," Eldred said. "People have been calling, emailing and contacting us on Facebook and Twitter to ask about volunteer opportunities. Our organizers in North Carolina are connecting with them on a variety of opportunities."

Planned Parenthood also reported a big increase in the number of women who inquired about long-lasting forms of birth control, including hormonal implants and intrauterine devices, spurred by fears of losing health care as Trump debates whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Among other local entities, those effects have been negligible. The Guilford County Health Department has not received an influx of calls inquiring about birth control, or access to health care or insurance, according to a spokeswoman.

Leaders of other local advocacy groups say their members are concerned, but they haven't received phone calls or requests for help. Mac Stroupe, the head of the local branch of PFLAG, an advocacy and support group for gay and transgender residents and their friends and families, said his organization was grappling with the implications of Trump's victory.

"This may fire us up again. After having some success with marriage equality, we've kind of relaxed a little bit," Stroupe said. "There's some opportunity for us to work together with other groups, but the big thing right now is that we need to stand with our transgender people and other minority populations."

And although hate crimes have increased nationally since Trump's victory -- the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded more than 300 cases of harassment or intimidation since Nov. 8 -- none have been reported to the Greensboro Police Department or the Guilford County Sheriff's Office.

But the divisive nature of the prolonged campaign and the rhetoric of Trump's promises have affected the community in other ways.

Beginning this fall, some students at Guilford County Schools taunted their classmates with some of the businessman's more famous campaign promises, including his proposal to erect a wall at the border between Mexico and the United States and to deport immigrants en masse.

"If you're an immigrant student and somebody's talking about building the wall or sending all the immigrants back, those comments and others are pretty charged," said Nora Carr, the school system's chief of staff. "Emotions were just heightened, and it can be confusing for children when adults are saying and doing things that we're then telling them are not acceptable in a school setting."

The school system sent guidance to its principals, Carr said, and conducted refresher training about hate speech and hate crimes. It's part of the schools' overall anti-bullying strategy, which has been in place for several years but has become newly important in recent months.

"We've been sort of addressing just the tenor and tone of not just the campaign, but the climate in the country. It's been divisive for a while," Carr said. "Post-election, it certainly felt like it was important to reinforce what we'd already been talking about throughout the fall."

It has not happened at every school, Carr said, though there have been incidents with students of all ages, from elementary school through high school.

In one school, students said they were afraid that their foreign-born teachers would be deported. In a kindergarten class, a student expressed delight that African Americans and Hispanics could be sent out of the country.

"This is a young child who doesn't know what he or she is saying, but obviously, it's a concern," Carr said. "And so we address it. You have to say, 'That kind of comment is inappropriate at school, that's not what we're going to have at school because that hurts other people's feelings, and isn't what we are about at school.'"

Contact Kate Elizabeth Queram at (336) 373-7003 and follow @KateElizabethNR on Twitter.

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