Council of Nonprofits in the News

And, of course, the latest factor is sequestration. While some argue that sequestration has a “phony war” feel to it, people who know better, like Tim Delaney, CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, would beg to differ. On March 1st, when sequestration went into effect, Tim noted, “Nonprofits are already severely depleted from doing so much more, for so many more, for so much longer, with so much less; they can no longer underwrite government’s failures.”

The point is that things have changed and, I believe, changed dramatically. In New York City, because of the pullback of government funding, it is unclear how we are, for example, going to pay for a social safety net or, for that matter, sustain it. And as I said earlier, when you have two million of your fellow citizens at or below the poverty line, well, that is a big freakin’ problem. And this is not only a New York City problem.  According to the Census Bureau, we now have 49 million Americans at or below that poverty line.

In Tulsa, Okla. last week, Tim Delaney, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, called for nonprofit organizations to come together and speak with a powerful, unified voice. This is what other sectors do when they feel they are under attack, he said. Other speakers echoed his call, including Carol Carter of LIFE Senior Services, who said that one of the biggest threats right now is government budget cutting. Carter is afraid that governments are not making smart cuts and are using an axe instead of a scalpel. By blithely hacking away at budgets, she contends, government officials are not considering the implications of their decisions.

Delaney also suggested that the government is using the nonprofit sector “like an ATM.” That is, elected officials are assuming that nonprofit organizations will immediately step in and fill any gap left by a cut in government services; the NPQ Newswire has documented numerous cases of this expectation at play in regions across the U.S. Delaney calls for nonprofit organizations to come together and lobby governments instead of sitting back and waiting. The reality is that the demand for services is higher and funding is tighter. Given such conditions, Delaney predicts that the sector can only expect things to get worse.

The nonprofit sector is under assault, and it's time for the members of the nonprofit community to unite and make their voices heard, the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits said Wednesday in Tulsa. 

"Other sectors, when they're under threat they exchange ideas across state lines," Tim Delaney said. "It's part of their DNA." 

Instead of being a unified sector, nonprofit groups operate as separate silos split between geography and subsections such as education, health care, civil rights and the arts, he told local leaders. 

"You are fragmented, divided and ineffective when you come from different sectors," he said. "We collectively have power when we unite together."