Demand for shelter, food, and myriad other social services has been on the rise — surpassing rates before the Great Recession.
Charities are struggling to serve all who seek aid — and could face even sharper increases in both the depth of need and the numbers crying for help given new proposals gaining momentum in Congress and at the White House. They not only hurt the needy but also cut funding to an array of nonprofits that help the most vulnerable.
That’s why it’s urgent for nonprofits to join forces to persuade Congress to reject ideas that create greater need. It has to help re-establish the bipartisan political agreements about compassionate safety-net programs that used to be the norm.
Charities must understand that such actions are just as essential as raising more money from private sources. To be sure, more money will help in the short term, but the size of philanthropy is so tiny compared with the federal government that it would be impossible to raise enough private dollars to make up for the cuts now being considered.
With the congressional midterm elections coming this November, now is the moment for foundations and other donors to support nonprofits doing the grass-roots organizing and education work that will help Americans fight back against dangerous and mean-spirited policies when they go to the polls. Organizations like Nonprofit Vote can help charities understand the rules about what they are allowed to do — and suggest tactics that make a difference. What’s more, Nonprofit Vote has issued two new guides that show private foundations and community foundations exactly how they can help nonprofits educate voters without crossing any legal boundaries.
Anti-Hunger vs. Immigration
The most recent example of mean-spirited policy efforts came in the vote to extend the farm bill, legislation that provides some of the most essential antihunger funding in the federal budget. The bill didn’t pass because the most conservative members in the Freedom Caucus withheld their support in an attempt to force a vote on an immigration measure — one considered too extreme by many other Republicans — that would deport many of the Dreamers who arrived in America as undocumented babies and toddlers.
Using fear of deportation also to discourage eligible recipients — including some of the hardest-working people in America — from accessing food aid was cruel enough. But when the farm bill does pass, as is likely soon, it will make harmful changes in the hunger-relief Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that most people know as food stamps. Provisions now in the measure mean that food-aid recipients have to work at least 20 hours a week. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates that more than a million people would lose aid as a result because they are unable to satisfy work or equivalent requirements for an array of legitimate reasons — such as unreliable transportation and shifting child-care and medical schedules.
Republicans justify their insistence that SNAP recipients must be required to work based on the research of the Foundation for Government Accountability, an obscure policy group whose recommendations have been profoundly criticized by both conservative and liberal scholars as having no basis in credible evidence. It seems that Republicans increasingly favor junk science and “alternative facts” over truth and demonstrable reality in social services just as they have consciously and explicitly done regarding climate change.
Helping Voters Understand
The alarming frequency with which the White House and Congress mislead America in service to their own agenda is why it’s so important for charities — working on all kinds of causes — to make sure every voter knows the facts about what works best to help America’s needy and its middle class get and keep good jobs, improve their health, afford a better education, and achieve the American dream.
Charities need to help voters understand that the reasons Republicans are seeking so many cuts in the safety net is that they ballooned the deficit by $1.5 trillion with their disastrous tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans. And they have an even more pernicious motivation: Last year, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney was very clear that President Trump’s administration sees government-funded services for the needy as theft from wealthy taxpayers.
And President Trump continues down the same path this year. He has proposed budget cuts of more than $15 billion by curbing the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Ebola preparedness and disaster relief and even trying to claw back over $100 million from Hurricane Sandy relief. Although Congressional Republicans, fearful of what they will face in 2018’s midterm elections, have at least temporarily rebuffed Trump’s first efforts, he said he plans to propose still an additional $10 billion in cuts to such programs.
Assault on Family Planning
The assault on human-service programs goes beyond funding cuts, and that is yet another fact that charities need to help voters understand. President Trump, with strong support from Republican politicians, just revived and modified a gag rule for nonprofit family-planning organizations and programs. He already banned international family-planning groups receiving U.S. funds from even mentioning the word “abortion” to their clients. Now he’s moving on domestic charities in the United States.
In an effort to hurt Planned Parenthood and other family-planning charities, Trump has said that any program that is even partially federally funded cannot refer clients for abortion services, nor can other family-planning services be located in a facility in which abortion services are offered. With this rule, Trump requires “a bright line of physical as well as financial separation” between programs that receive Title X funding and those that perform, support, or make referrals for abortions.”
Trump’s action means that astounding new costs will have to be incurred by family-planning charities, and many will be unable to handle those multiplied operating expenses. With the need for duplication of physical, administrative, and program facilities — and all of the computers, printers, copiers, and other office and program equipment necessary for operations — Republican policy will really hamper and in some cases likely bankrupt and close human-service providers. And that would increase both the need for abortions and the number of unwelcome children.
Moreover, the proposed rule would hit many frontline health providers for the nation’s poorest people. About two-thirds of people who visit family-planning services are below the federal poverty level, and nonprofit organizations that serve them would be hard-pressed to fund all of their programs. Even if a charity could finance two facilities and pay two staffs required under this rule, practitioners in one facility could not refer patients to their colleagues in their new offices, even if they were in the building next door.
And if Republicans succeed in their plans, things will get still worse for average Americans as well as those in need and the charities that serve them. The Trump administration and the Republican Congress already are even talking about going after Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that provide aid to all.
Nonprofit organization cannot allow these regressive policies to prevail. They need to do everything they can to inform and activate the electorate so that people understand what is at stake, know who truly represents their interests, and turn out to vote in the 2018 elections. The facts prove that federal aid efforts work — especially those that flow to and through the nation’s hundreds of thousands of social-service groups.
Instead of forever trying to fill public shortfalls with private philanthropy, it’s up to nonprofits and foundations to do the organizing and advocacy before the November elections to be sure that our elected leaders — from the president on down — stop spreading fake news and acting on mean-spirited lies.
Mark Rosenman is a professor emeritus at Union Institute & University and a veteran nonprofit activist.
