Trying to Comply with Cruel and Unjust Requirements
In the past few weeks, I have spoken with nonprofit leaders and they have been under a lot of stress. I wanted to share the nature of those conversations with you. I have eliminated identifying information for the people and even the work being done to protect those involved - because in today’s political world, people need protection.
In some government applications, applicants are required to include not only their nonprofit’s social media handles, but the PERSONAL social media handles of their executive director and Board members. Given the expressed agenda of retaliation of our current administration, is it even worth it for an Executive Director to take the time to complete those applications if they have a Board Member that is publicly critical of the current administration?
Nonprofit leaders and others are being harassed by people in the community and by government officials emboldened by the anti-equity, anti-immigrant, anti-diversity agenda of the current administration.
Some nonprofit leaders have abandoned their plans for 2025 because either they know they won’t be able to implement them or because there is an emergent need in their community they want to respond to - a need directly related to the policies of the current administration.
Nonprofit leaders are having emergency meetings with their Boards trying to determine if they need to or want to change their mission statements. If they don’t, they might lose funding opportunities. But to change them is to abandon a carefully crafted statement of purpose for their organization.
Nonprofit leaders and staff are spending an inordinate number of hours scrubbing their websites and grant applications and proposals for words like “women,” “bias,” “clean energy,” “pregnant person,” “advocate,” and many others. (By the way, it is still okay to say “men,” just not “men having sex with men.”)
Nonprofit leaders are busy cancelling trainings, activities, and plans where either the funding has already disappeared or they fear it will.
With the Republican Congress continuing to advance their plans to cut Medicaid, those organizations who support vulnerable populations are frantic about what will happen to the people they support who rely on Medicaid if Congress advances their plans.
Organizations whose entire mission is totally contrary to the current administration's goals (such as combatting racism, addressing climate change, supporting LGBTQ+ people, and helping to settle immigrants) find themselves being the target of the federal government after years or decades doing this same work with the support and often gratitude of their government.
Nonprofit leaders are finding themselves having uncomfortable conversations with staff about changing their signature lines so as not to invite the ire of the federal government or those that support it. Nonprofits traditionally have been a welcoming space for people and now new policies are creating discomfort for everyone.
At a time when social security offices are being closed, food programs for children have been shuttered, scientists are being fired, FEMA is being dismantled, immigrants with no criminal records are being rounded up and sent to a brutal foreign prison with no due process, and the government is demanding that schools remove anything they consider DEI - our nonprofit community does what it can to fill in the gaps left by our government. But, our government is busy creating unnecessary, unwelcome, and often cruel barriers to do what they do best.
Our nonprofits are jewels in our communities. It breaks my heart to see the damage being done. I hope that you will join me at every opportunity to stand with our nonprofits and all the people and causes they support.
