Nonprofits are struggling to provide needed services while doing right by their employees. Groups are making difficult decisions and navigating new arenas — such as telework — at the same time they’re figuring out how to weather canceled fundraising events and an uncertain financial future.
“You’re going to see an increase in hunger, need for access to medical services, increases in things like domestic violence,” says David Greco, CEO of Social Sector Partners, which works with small nonprofits. “The very groups that provide critical services are understaffed, underresourced, and they’re just not going to be able to respond in the way that our communities need them to.”
In Washington State, where the first cases of the coronavirus were detected, government officials have taken increasingly stringent measures to protect people from the virus — closing bars, restaurants, gyms and other gathering places across the state and shutting down schools in the hardest-hit counties. . As the response to the virus was unfolding,, Miriam Barnett, the CEO of the YWCA Pierce County in Tacoma, knew demand would grow for her organization’s domestic-violence services: counseling, legal help, and a shelter.
Families in her area would be at home together for weeks and maybe longer while many people were losing income and even their jobs. “When family stress goes up, so does domestic violence,” says Barnett.
She’s worried about the potential surge in demand but also wants to protect her staff and clients. The organization has given each employee an additional 80 hours of paid sick leave, in addition to the flexible personal time off it already provided. She hopes this will encourage workers to stay home if they are not feeling well rather than try to save their personal time off for use as vacation time.
For the safety of both clients and staff, people seeking services are no longer allowed in the group’s offices. All meetings with its lawyers are now conducted over the phone rather than in person. The group stopped sending advocates to court with clients, but lawyers still go.
Support groups and children’s programs have been canceled. Its shelter for victims of domestic violence remains open, but the food pantry in the building, which used be open 24 hours a day, can now only be accessed by one adult at a time, with gloves on. The same with the laundry facility.
Meanwhile, her organization has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in badly needed support. It canceled one fundraising event scheduled for April, and another, scheduled to take place last weekend and organized by an outside group, was also called off. “It’s the worst of a perfect storm,” Barnett says.
Fight for Survival
Nonprofits are scrambling at a time when their services are needed most, yet many cash-strapped groups are ill-equipped to help their employees through this tumultuous period. Many small social-service organizations have only enough money to last 30 to 60 days, says Greco. As school districts close, he says, nonprofits that work with young people are losing contracts, often their only source of income.
In California, many groups struggled to pay their workers minimum wage when it rose to $15 an hour. He says they are trying to be as flexible as they can with their staff, but for groups that are losing contracts and whose workers cannot do their jobs remotely, layoffs are inevitable. What’s more, even if the groups survive, it may be some time before those jobs come back.
“When the nonprofit sector is really being pushed and strained, we’re seeing how dependent the sector has become on overworking people, underpaying them, using volunteers, and relying on people working extra hours while not being paid,” says Greco. “The very gas that kept the nonprofit sector going, which is sweat equity, that’s being dried up.”
The groups that work directly with those most at risk — people who are elderly, sick, or homeless — are weighing concerns about the safety of their staff against the need for their services, says Rick Cohen, spokesman for the National Council of Nonprofits.
Kayla Blado, president of the Nonprofit Professional Employee’s Union, sent a letter to the union’s employers asking them to mandate telework and pay those employees who cannot come to work but also can’t work remotely, such as receptionists.
In a statement to nonprofit leaders, Blado wrote, “While we wait on policy makers to make the correct public-health decisions, your staff and their families are counting on your decisive leadership to keep them healthy. NPEU is urging you to close your office and move all of your staff to remote work as soon as you can.”
‘Hour by Hour’
But for many groups, that is not easy to do. Barnett’s employees have never worked from home and are not well-equipped to do so. The group does not have enough computers or “VPN” capacity to securely link those remote computers to its network. It has hourly employees who are not able to access email from their home computers or phones because they are not supposed to work more than 40 hours a week.
With schools closed and children at home, employees will have a harder time coming to work. But people who can’t come into the office can use their additional sick leave.
“We are not prepared because we do not have any of our employees working from home, ever,” Barnett said last week. She was worried that if things got worse, she’d have to close the office entirely and wasn’t sure how the group would provide services.
The coming days and weeks are uncertain for nonprofits. Groups will need to adapt based on new information about the spread of the virus, Cohen says, adding that every organization will face challenges.
“Every single nonprofit, regardless of size, scope, geographic location, are all being affected by this right now,” Cohen says. “Many are just taking it day by day, hour by hour, and doing the very best that they can in uncharted waters.”
