The government was once a steady partner for nonprofits. That’s changing

By THALIA BEATY Associated Press Dawn Price signs rent checks worth about every month for people that her nonprofit helps house in Laguna Beach California Usually she logs into an online portal to withdraw enough from an account funded by a grant from the federal housing agency But in February she couldn t Access had been temporarily cut off for countless housing organizations as part of the Trump administration s cuts and funding freezes That was just a sea change for us for those dollars to be so at once at liability revealed Price the executive director of Friendship Shelter which started in as a society organization Access was eventually restored but the episode took a toll Administration moves slowly usually and I think what was so disorienting early on was authorities was moving really fast she revealed In the early days of his second term President Donald Trump froze cut or threatened to cut a huge range of social services programs from society safety to early childhood training to food assistance and services for refugee resettlement Staffing cuts to federal agencies have also contributed to delays and uncertainty around future grant funds Altogether his policies are poised to upend decades of partnerships the federal leadership has built with nonprofits to help people in their communities This vast and interconnected set of programs funded by taxpayers has been significantly dismantled in just months nonprofit leaders researchers and funders say And even deeper permanent cuts are still attainable That uncertainty is also taking a toll on their staff and communities the leaders explained James Carey housing director for the Friendship Shelter gives a tour of the one of the apartments that the organization provides for homeless people Monday July in San Clemente Calif AP Photo Denis Poroy In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding White House spokesperson Kush Desai noted Instead of regime largesse that s often riddled with corruption waste fraud and abuse the Trump administration is focused on unleashing America s economic resurgence to fuel Americans individual generosity He pointed to a new deduction for charitable giving included in the in recent days passed tax and spending law that he reported encourages Americans innate altruism But experts say private donations will not be enough to meet the requirements In billion was granted to nonprofits from all levels of administration according to an analysis by the Urban Institute published in February While the evidence includes tax-exempt organizations like local food pantries as well as universities and nonprofit hospitals it underestimates the total funding that nonprofits receive from the authorities It includes grants but not contracts for services nor reimbursements from programs like Medicare It also excludes the smallest nonprofits which file a different abbreviated tax form However the figure does give a sense of the scale of the historic and until now solid relationship between the masses sector and nonprofits over the last years Now this system is at danger and leaders like Price say the cost of undoing it will be catastrophic Regime funding to nonprofits reaches far and wide The Urban Institute s analysis shows more than half of nonprofits in every state received establishment grants in In the vast majority of the country the typical nonprofit would run a deficit without executive funding Only in two Congressional districts one including parts of Orange County California and another in the suburbs west of Atlanta would a typical nonprofit not be in the red if they lost all of their masses grant funding the analysis exposed But in Orange County famous for its stunning beaches mansions and extraordinary wealth funders nonprofits and researchers commented that finding surprised them In part that s because of major economic inequalities in the county and its high cost of living Taryn Palumbo executive director of Orange County Grantmakers commented nonprofits are not as optimistic about their resiliency They are seeing their budgets getting slashed by or she mentioned Or they re having to look to restructure programs that they are running or how they re serving or the number of people that they re serving Last year the local Samueli Foundation commissioned a research of nonprofit requirements in part because they were significantly increasing their grantmaking from million in to an estimated million in They uncovered local nonprofits stated problems maintaining staff a deep lack of commitment in their operations and a dearth of flexible reserve funds The foundation responded by opening applications for both unrestricted grants and to promotion investments in buildings or land Against this million in anticipated awards they received applications for more than million announced Lindsey Spindle the foundation s president President of Samueli Family Philanthropies Lindsey Spindle speaks with cofounder Henry Samueli at the foundation s offices in Corona Del Mar Calif Monday July AP Photo Zo Meyers It tells a really stark picture of how unbelievably deep and broad the need is Spindle revealed There is not a single part of the nonprofit sector that has not responded to these funds Every topic you can think of poverty animal welfare arts and custom civil rights domestic abuse They re telling us loud and clear that they are struggling to stay alive Charitable organizations have held a special role in the U S One of the founding stories of the United States is the importance of the voluntary sector of neighbors helping neighbors and of individuals solving social problems While other liberal democracies built strong welfare states the U S has preferred to look to the charitable sector to provide a substantial part of social services Since the s the federal governing body has largely funded those social services by giving money to nonprofits universities hospitals and companies Several new policies converged at that time to create this system including the expansion of the federal income tax during World War II and the codification of tax-exempt charitable organizations in Then the Kennedy and Johnson administrations started to fund nonprofits directly with federal money as part of urban renewal and Great Society programs Related Articles Trump and Philippine leader plan to talk tariffs and China at the White House US says it s leaving UN cultural agency UNESCO again only years after rejoining Banishing a reporter Trump escalates battle with Wall Street Journal over Epstein story Budget office says Trump s tax law will add trillion to deficits leave million uninsured Trump caught off guard by contemporary Israeli strikes White House says It was a key approach of midcentury liberalism of addressing issues of poverty sort of making a reference to civil rights and racial inequality but not growing the size of establishment revealed Claire Dunning an assistant professor of residents protocol at the University of Maryland College Park Conservatives also tended to encouragement working through local private nonprofit organizations though for different reasons than liberals she mentioned With various expansions and cuts during different presidencies the federal governing body has continued to fund nonprofits at notable levels essentially hiding the ruling body in plain sight Dunning announced The size and importance of the nonprofit apparatus became suddenly visible in January when the Trump administration sought to freeze federal grants and loans Dunning disclosed the speed hostility and scale of the proposed cuts broke with the long legacy of bipartisan help for nonprofits People had no idea that the community physical condition information or services they are receiving their Meals on Wheels venture their afterschool tutoring venture the local park cleanup were certainly enabled by population administration dollars she noted A coalition of nonprofits challenged the freeze in court in a development that is ongoing but in the six months since the administration has cut paused or discontinued a vast array of programs and grants The impacts of specific of those approach changes have been felt forthwith but various will not hit the ground until current grant funding runs out which could be in months or years depending on the programs Private donations can t replace scale of executive promotion Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach has an annual budget of about million million of which comes from authorities sources Price announced the cabinet funding is braided in complex options to house and help people They ve already lost a rental reimbursement grant from the U S Department of Housing and Urban Advance But the Samueli Foundation stepped in to backfill those lost funds for three years That kind of assistance is extremely uncommon she reported We don t know of any large-scale private philanthropy response to keeping people housed because it s a forever commitment Price disclosed That person is in housing and is going to need the subsidy for the rest of their lives These are seriously disabled people with multiple issues that they re facing that they need help with She also believes that even in a wealthy place like Orange County private donors are not prepared to give five six or eight times as much as they do at this moment Donors already subsidize their ruling body grants which she revealed pay for of the actual activity costs We are providing this utility to our executive at a loss at a business loss and then making up that loss with these Medicaid dollars and also the private fundraising she announced She stated her organization has discussed having to put people out of housing back on to the streets if the ruling body funding is cut further That would be I think a signal to me that something is deeply deeply wrong with how we re looking at these issues explained Price adding If I was placing a bet I would bet that we have enough good still in regime to prevent that Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives backing through the AP s collaboration with The Conversation US with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc The AP is solely responsible for this content