Giving Compass' Take:
- Thalia Beaty reports on how nonprofits face an uncertain future as federal funding is rolled back, emphasizing concerns that donations will not be able to fill the gaps.
- What can you do as a donor to support systems change to ensure the nonprofits that support your community's needs have the funding they need to continue operating effectively?
- Learn more about trends and topics related to best practices in giving.
- Search Guide to Good for purpose-driven nonprofits in your area.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Search our Guide to Good
Start searching for your way to change the world.
Dawn Price signs rent checks worth about $160,000 every month for 79 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 many housing organizations as part of the Trump administration’s cuts and funding freezes, demonstrating how nonprofits are facing an uncertain future.
“That was just a sea change for us for those dollars to be so immediately at risk,” said Price, the executive director of Friendship Shelter, which started in 1987 as a community organization. Access was eventually restored but the episode took a toll.
“Government moves slowly usually, and I think what was so disorienting early on was government was moving really fast,” she said.
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 public safety to early childhood education 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 government 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 possible. That uncertainty is also taking a toll on their staff and communities, the leaders said.
In response to questions about the cuts to grant funding, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “Instead of government 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 recently passed tax and spending law that he said encourages Americans’ “innate altruism.” However, nonprofits still face an uncertain future.
Read the full article about nonprofits' uncertain future by Thalia Beaty at The Associated Press.