If you had tens of thousands of dollars to spend to help refugees who recently arrived in the United States, you might think it would be easy to give it away to an organization that could assist.

But that hasn’t been the experience of Tom Smith, who with his family and another one hopes to sponsor or somehow support one or more refugee families. He called some agencies he read about in newspaper articles but struggled to find the right person to talk to. On one occasion, he did not even get a return phone call.

Anyone else considering the same sort of outreach is likely to leave messages at organizations where the workers feel as if they are under siege. Thanks to President Trump’s executive orders to cut the number of people who can come to the United States and his attempts to change other rules on the fly, the work and the confusion grow by the hour on some days. Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday that he would sign a new order next week restricting travel to the country will create even more uncertainty.

So this week, I gathered as much information as I could for people, like Mr. Smith, who want to help refugees already in the United States. It pairs with a column my colleague Tara Siegel Bernard wrote 14 months ago about how to help refugees around the world.