Nonprofits and Donors Worry About Long-Term Impact of Shutdown

President Trump and Congress agreed Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks to continue negotiations on the nation’s border policy, but nonprofits continued to receive grants and donations that might still be necessary if the shutdown starts again in February.

• United Way Worldwide said at a meeting with reporters today that it has rounded up major groups and businesses, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the AFL-CIO, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Lyft, Sprint, Airbnb, and PayPal to donate money and services to help federal workers, contractors, and others hurt by the partial shutdown.
• JPMorgan Chase announced today that it was sending a total of $1 million, with matching employee donations coming soon, to United Way and Feeding America to help them deal with increased demand from federal workers and others. That follows other companies’ swift responses. For example, on Sunday, Kraft bought a full-page ad in the Washington Post committing to donating food and other products and urging other companies to do the same.
• Feeding America says it has also received $100,000 from Walmart to provide aid to food banks that have been inundated with requests for help from federal workers and others. Walmart also provided $100,000 apiece to United Way and the Coast Guard Foundation for efforts to aid federal workers.
• Several community foundations are providing emergency grants and say donations have been flowing from people who want to help. In Washington, the local community foundation has allocated $50,000 in emergency aid to local charities. After the announcement, it raised additional donations of $10 to $50,000.

Meanwhile, the Community Foundation of the Ozarks and the Multipli Credit Union joined forces to provide no-interest loans to federal employees. Other community foundations have stepped in to create emergency funds. The Pinellas Community Foundation is providing emergency food relief in the form of three grants of $10,000 each to support Feeding Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg Free Clinic, and RCS Pinellas, and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County is using its more than $1 million Season of Sharing Fund to help nonprofits seeing increased demand because of the shutdown.

Concerns About What’s Next

Nonprofits have been a reliable resource thus far, said Tim Delaney, president of the National Council of Nonprofits, and Donna Murray-Brown, chief executive of the Michigan Nonprofit Association, in a public letter.

Delaney previously called the shutdown an unnatural disaster for nonprofits and the wider economy. “We all need to take action to end the shutdown and alleviate the pain it has been generating,” the pair wrote in a call to action before the three week negotiations were announced. “We need to lift our voices to ensure our elected officials know the human cost of their political games.”

Organizations that advise wealthy donors say they have also been asked for advice about where to give.

Shelley Whelpton, senior managing director of Arabella Advisors, which offered a webinar for donors last week on ways to help, said donors should look to help legal-aid groups and the Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund, the only nonprofit that directly serves federal workers.

“Many funders may not be aware of the utility and power of legal aid,” Whelpton said, adding that legal aid helps people who are at risk of evictions. “Legal-aid providers were probably only meeting 50 percent of demand, but now the demand has grown exponentially, particularly for low-income women and single mothers,” Whelpton said.

Even if the shutdown ends soon, there will still be residual effects that need to be addressed, said Mary Sellers, president of United Way Worldwide. Federal workers who owe money on their temporary loans and bills will need to make payments soon, creating another financial problem. And if a deal to open government is temporary, nonprofits could face another period of increased demand from a future shutdown.