Nonprofits in the Crosshairs

Ready - Fire(!) - Aim

March 1, 2025

In attempting to write a weekly “Current Affairs” diary post, it is exceedingly and increasingly hard to focus on any one horrific story line selected from the torrent of horrific headlines that stream across our screens lately. I picked one this week because it is dear to my heart personally and will probably get buried in the avalanche of stories that will garner more attention. I am watching in disbelief as our nonprofit community reels from the one two punches of funding threats along with the forced abandonment of DEI initiatives. Somehow, the goal of seeking diversity, equity, and inclusion in our organizations is now a bad thing.

By all appearances, it does seem that many of these DOGE “cost cutting” initiatives are being implemented without any focus at all, and we are witnessing the collateral damage of budgeting by wrecking ball. When you do that things tend to get smashed, and the probability of doing serious and lasting damage is substantial. According to the Center for Nonprofits & Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, over 95% of counties in the United States have at least one public charity that receives government grants. Without this support, many would be unable to cover their operating expenses.

Some high-profile nonprofits like PBS and NPR have been in conservative Republican crosshairs for years and some just see this as a good opportunity to silence voices that they view as objectionable. (Republican) Congresswoman Claudia Tenney introduced a bill this week to complement (Republican) Senator Mike Lee’s legislation to defund NPR. Do I really have to point out that these folks are (Republicans)? According to my friends at North Country Public Radio, “NPR receives about 1% of its funding from the federal government.” I probably will be called out for suggesting this, but part of me will not be upset if these NPR bashing conservatives get their way and eliminate the federal subsidy. My reasoning is this: the first rule of not-for-profit fundraising (or sales) is to “create a sense of urgency”. One percent is still a lot of money, but cutting off NPR’s funding will be a clarion call to listeners for help, and I predict that the end result will be an avalanche of new listener financial support that will far surpass the 1% of funding that the feds previously supplied. That part of me wants to let them do this and get it over with. The biggest losers will be the residents of rural red states whose only remaining local news access and whose best chance of experiencing a live opera performance from the Met is on Saturday afternoons on their local NPR station. The other more reasoned part of me sees this as the vindictive, counterproductive initiative that it really is.

Many other nonprofits have seen their federal grant funding evaporate as the Trump-Musk-DOGE shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later “review” process questions any and all payments to any and all recipients. It seems to not matter to the DOGE team if that funding is providing essential health services and medical research or baseball bats for next summer’s little league.

When you are in the middle of a street fight like this it is easy to lose sight of the reasons that local nonprofit organizations are so important to our communities, particularly in smaller rural communities. Think about the organizations in your town that operate as not-for-profits. In all probability, the local health care center or hospital is not-for-profit. The local performing arts center and the theater group that uses that space are too. The “Friends of the Library” and the volunteer fire department are nonprofits, along with the Community Center and Senior Center and the local food bank and Meals on Wheels, and the museums and the arts centers and the community foundation that supports it all. If you could imagine what your town would be like without those not for profits, you would see a town that you would not want to live in. Those nonprofit organizations are what makes your town a community. They are the fabric that binds a community together. They also all have one thing in common: they all require public support to keep the doors open (and volunteers to hold the doors).

Conservatives have complained for years that public funds should not be used for the production of not-for-profit programming that they see as objectionable. They suggest that those expenses are a misuse of taxpayer money, and that alternatively, nonprofits should be funded exclusively with private donations. They see the nonprofit community (especially NPR or PBS) as “too liberal”, or the art exhibit at the nonprofit gallery as too explicit or anti-something, and not worthy of taxpayer funded support. I have a few very strong objections to that sentiment, opinions formed over a lifetime of nonprofit management and fund raising, with the perspective of both a foundation “funder” and a nonprofit “grantee”.

There is a world of difference between nonprofit organizations operating in urban centers compared to those in rural communities with small populations. For all the obvious reasons, scale matters, and it makes more sense to put major cultural venues like Lincoln Center or The Museum of Modern Art in places like New York City where they will be accessible to the most people. For similar reasons, funders also focus on these major metropolitan cultural centers, where their philanthropic dollars will do the most good. Smaller nonprofit organizations—particularly arts organizations located outside of urban centers— find it much more difficult to raise money to support their operations. The patrons who are left out, particularly the younger patrons like school children, live in rural areas with fewer cultural options. It is worth noting that residents of rural red states are the most impacted in this scenario.

Nonprofit arts organizations in small rural communities suffer from an additional handicap in their fundraising. Major philanthropic funders, particularly national endowments and foundations, focus on making grants where they can “move the needle”, and where funding will help the most people. Rural communities with fewer potential patrons suffer from that bias. In addition, major funders, like all donors, want to support the most important – and the most urgent – requests for funding. They want to make grants to organizations that will fill the most urgent needs. When arts organizations have to compete for funding with food banks, it is hard to justify funding the arts. “Hungry always wins” is a reality that all arts and cultural organizations have to deal with, especially in times of stress like a pandemic where the line of cars at the food bank is circled around the block. Non-profits need a dedicated source of public funds that will be there for them regardless of the circumstances. The most efficient way to make that happen is with public taxpayer funding. Conservatives will still argue that this funding should be privately financed without taxpayer support. If that were to be the case, nonprofits would be wholly dependent upon private philanthropic dollars, and once again, rural communities would be last in line. Importantly – many local nonprofits benefit from a few large (by local scale) family foundations / endowments that are the largest source of funding in their communities. Without federal and state funding for the arts in rural communities, these few large funders—who each have their own preferences and biases— would be the major source of philanthropic support. While we are—and should be—most appreciative of the generosity of these individual foundations, I do not think we should be entrusting the cultural programming for our families and neighbors to the artistic preferences of these few large benefactors in each community. For similar reasons, federal funding should not be subject to the whims of politicians who question “Is this art?” and then threaten to cancel taxpayer support if they don’t appreciate the art, or the artist. Non-partisan panels such as those utilized by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are the most appropriate and efficient way to support the arts and humanities. To the surprise of no one in the arts, NEA and NEH are also currently under attack by conservative Republicans. I wrote more about this effort in a prior post.

We need and deserve public support for the arts, particularly for programming for students in rural communities. The current effort by the new administration to undercut these important local cultural venues is misguided and counterproductive. Our kids deserve more than the annual school bus trip to see Lion King.

(Full disclosure: I currently serve on the Executive Council of North Country Public Radio and volunteer with Humanities New York and the Adirondack Foundation, the community foundation serving the north country of northern New York.)

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