Paul Light, a professor of Public Service at New York University, has warned that some 100,000 nonprofit organizations may be wiped out in the next few years. At a minimum. The financial crisis comes on the heels of a presidential campaign that drained the coffers of many big donors. The ACLU alone is facing a $19 million hole in its budget and has had to cancel various projects as well as dismiss 10 percent of its staff nationwide.
Eyal Press in The Nation Magazine writes that, "Now, with foundations watching their endowments shrivel, many individual donors maxed out and states across the country staring at massive budget deficits, nonprofits are scaling back their services at the very moment when the need for them is escalating."
Press, Marjorie Fine of the Center for Community Change, Talia Schank of Community Voices Heard, and Katherine Acey of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice discuss the fate of nonprofits in a world of falling profits.
From the Boston Globe:
Those involved in the nonprofit sector say such deals [mergers of nonprofits] have increased in the last decade, but are accelerating now as organizations face a drop in donations and cuts in funding due to the recession. While many groups are still operating with funds from last year, they anticipate feeling the full brunt of the economic downturn over the next six to 18 months.
By GRITtv on April 15th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Tampa may decrease funding to nonprofits.
By GRITtv on April 15th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Tough times for nonprofits.
Nonprofit Finance Fund has expanded its offerings for nonprofit organizations and foundations to help support strategic decision-making and financial management during the economic recession.
By GRITtv on April 15th, 2009 at 11:21 am
100,000 non-profits failing is a low estimate.
Look around in your communities at the hundreds of little groups you pass on your way to work or occasionally you hear of via mail solitications. Churches, ecology centers, science centers, entrepreneurial centers, little private colleges, local development councils, chambers of commerce, private schools, homeless shelters, food pantries, fragile NPR stations in fringe areas, friends of the old abandoned firehouse, Boy Scout and Girl Scout Councils, historical Fort Podunk, service clubs, the fifty or so groups in the United Fund, the financial umbrella groups that deal in differed giving, all four/five…twenty hopitals that compete in close proximity on very shaky grounds, etc., etc., etc. Many of these organizations “retired” their professional help years ago and are down to skeleton or volunteer work forces.
Kiss maybe half of them “goodbye.”
By hychka on April 15th, 2009 at 2:10 pm