Good afternoon,

What you need to know this week: Senate defunds public broadcasting, a House hearing on nonprofit ‘exploitation,’ OpenAI holds 10-city Nonprofit Jam, and more.

—Tamara Straus, senior editor

PBS Kids

• U.S. media in jeopardy: Nonprofit stations that get nearly all their money from the federal government are in jeopardy after the Senate approved this morning to rescind $9 billion in federal funding, reports the New York Times. Of that amount, $1.1 billion was for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS and radio stations; the rest was earmarked for foreign aid.
• Congressional spending power: The 51-to-48 vote came over the objections of two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who argued that their party was ceding Congress’s constitutional control over federal funding.
• Timeline: The House is expected to give final approval to the rescission package later today, per the Washington Post, sending it to President Trump for his signature Friday. If it passes the House, funding for public media will dry up beginning in October, according to the Times. NPR and PBS will survive, but the cuts will force many local and especially rural stations to reduce their programming and operations or close.
• Ruined revenue model: “If the Corporation for Public Broadcasting money goes away,” Susan Goldberg, president of Boston’s GBH, told the Chronicle of Philanthropy in June, “then stations won’t be able to pay the dues to PBS. PBS then won’t then be able to give us the money that we use to create programming.”
• Philanthropic shortfall: Public TV and radio stations that close will probably not be replaced in the short term, said Neal Zuckerman, a managing director at the Boston Consulting Group, whose research paper on the economics of local media estimated it would cost $1 billion annually to fund significant journalism across the U.S., requiring an endowment of $20 billion.

• ‘Radical causes’: The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight held a hearing Tuesday to examine “how left-wing organizations have exploited federal tax dollars to advance their radical causes.”
• Focus on USAID, DOJ: The hearing focused on how federal grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Justice Department to a wide range of nonprofits were “leveraged to fund causes fundamentally opposed to the national interests of Americans.”
• Four conservative witnesses: The hearing featured statements from Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center; Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Tyler O’Neil, senior editor of the Daily Signal; and Ambassador (ret.) Luis C.deBaca, professor of practice at University of Michigan Law School.
• ‘Tip of the iceberg’: “The groups and grants mentioned here are only the tip of the iceberg of federal funding for left-wing nonprofits,” said Walter of Capital Research Center.

• End of ‘siloed’ services: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration cut funding to a hotline for LGBTQ+ youths starting today. Going forward, per SAMSA’s statement, the “988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services,” and all individuals “will continue to receive access to skilled, caring, culturally competent crisis counselors” through the main hotline.
• Need was rising: Launched in July 2022 with $520 million from the Biden administration, the LGBTQ-focused network of more than 200 state and local call centers has received nearly 1.5 million calls, texts, and online chat messages, according to SAMSA data. Counselors fielded roughly 70,000 crisis contacts in April, the latest month for which such data is available, marking an all-time high.
• Call for funding: The Trevor Project, one of 988 Lifeline’s main contact centers, is calling on individual donors and corporations to take a stand against the politicization of a bipartisan issue — suicide prevention for high-risk groups — and fill the gap in funding. “Suicide prevention is about people, not politics,” said Mark Henson, the Trevor Project’s interim vice president. “Every young person, no matter who they are or who they love, deserves to grow up feeling seen, safe, and supported. (The Chronicle reported that LGBTQ funding doubled from 2014 to 2024, although donations since appear to have dipped.)

• From 10 percent back down to 1.39 percent: Two Republican senators and a broad bipartisan coalition of funders and nonprofits prevented a 600 percent increase in taxes levied on the investment income of private foundations with assets of more than $5 billion, which was part of an earlier version of Mr. Trump’s tax and spending bill, the Associated Press reported.
• Two GOP Senators: Sen. Todd Young of Indiana told the AP, “I do have to say that this took some persuasion.” The other champion of the effort was Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.
• Conservative philanthropy: Also in opposition to the proposed tax increase were conservative philanthropic groups, such as the Philanthropy Roundtable, which led a coalition that sent a letter to Senate majority leader Sen. John Thune of Montana and Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, who leads the Senate Finance Committee.

• 1,000 nonprofit leaders in 10 locations: OpenAI, the nonprofit that transformed communications and media with the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, is holding a Nonprofit Jam today for 1,000 leaders in 10 cities. The event acknowledges that many nonprofits are unable to be tech-forward because of staff and budget limitations, barriers confirmed by a recent Chronicle tech survey.
• Listen, learn, collaborate: Organized by the OpenAI Academy with funding from the Walton Family Foundation and Emerson Collective, the event is intended to allow OpenAI teams to “work with these leaders to explore how generative AI can help scale their impact — and listen to, learn from, and collaborate with those at the center of this vital work,” according to a statement.
• More AI use on the way? “Nonprofits are often first to step up when communities face tough challenges, but they’re usually the last to benefit from transformative and disruptive new technologies,” Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer said. The Chronicle’s survey found that 77 percent of nonprofits expect to use AI within three to five years, despite only 46 percent using it currently. And AP reportedThursday that a group of funders, including the Gates Foundation and Ballmer Group, will spend $1 billion over 15 years to help develop AI tools for public defenders, parole officers, social workers, and other frontline workers.

“People will be mad and eager to support public media. It could very well be rocket fuel for fundraising.”

– Steve Williams, CEO of WBGO, on the clawback of public broadcasting funding

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