State Budgets & Nonprofits

Unfortunately, many nonprofits are dependent upon government for a major source—if not all—of their funding, and the future is looking as bad as the present in that regards, as this article from the Nonprofit Quarterly reports.

An excerpt.

“State budgets were a mess in FY2009, a debacle in FY2010, and look like impending catastrophes in FY2011. We've been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Present this past holiday season with rampaging budget deficits and corresponding cuts in critical social safety net programs and services. Knocking at the door is the ghost of Christmas future with warnings of continuing program rescissions and terminations unless governments and voters, like a dumbfounded Scrooge, come to their senses and radically change their revenue-raising and budget-allocating ways.

“Looking back at this holiday season, the news about state budget deficits affecting critical nonprofit concerns could have been accompanied by the sounds of the chains dragged by Jacob Marley's ghost.

“In Nebraska, a survey of state legislators pondering budget cutting• strategies revealed some discussing the elimination of entire agencies, not just programs.

“In California, Governor Schwarzenegger has come up with a budget cutting• strategy of asking the feds to relieve the state from federally mandated social service and health care delivery mandates. The result is the same as a budget cut—less services for people in need. The state's budget problems reverberate down to other levels of government, with the likelihood that some small California cities may end up going Chapter 9 (the municipal government version of chapter 11 bankruptcy). Among the state programs potentially on the chopping block if new federal stimulus aid or budget gimmicks don't work are three "safety net" programs: CalWORKs, Healthy Families, and In-Home Supportive Services. Securing new federal stimulus moneys and exemption from federal performance standards with those moneys and others will require the Governor to buddy up to his new pals, House Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, though Schwarzenegger is probably not the only governor asking for papal dispensation.”