Is your charitable nonprofit struggling with unfilled vacancies, long waiting lists of people seeking services, chronic burnout, and other challenges. Or is the nonprofit workforce shortages crisis a thing of the past? The entire charitable sector needs to know.

A major survey and report in late 2021 identified the scope of the problems related to nonprofit workforce shortages and identified public policies and practical solutions that have helped organizations hire and retain the staff they need to advance their missions. We invite you to complete the updated survey and help the nonprofit sector tell its story.

The end of the national and public health emergency declarations are still more than a month away – on May 11 – but the impacts on individuals and the nonprofits serving them are becoming clearer. Supplemental food supports ended in February, causing a spike in the number of people turning to food banks, houses of worship, and other charitable organizations to meet their needs. This past weekend, expanded Medicaid eligibility ended in five states, which will be followed by 34 more states by June. [Read more]

• Why It Matters: Food banks, houses of worship, and other charitable nonprofits can anticipate a significant increase in the number of individuals and families who turn to them for relief when they lose food, housing, and health care supports.
  

The pandemic exacerbated numerous, long-standing challenges caused by flaws in government grants and contracting processes, and lawmakers around the country are taking action to provide remedies. A series of significant bills in California, known as the California Nonprofit Equity Initiative, seek to ensure certainty, consistency, fairness, and respect for nonprofits providing services on behalf of governments through grants and contracts. Lawmakers in Kentucky and North Carolina are on the verge of enacting similar reforms. [Read more]

• Why It Matters: Backed by the respect and goodwill established during the pandemic, charitable nonprofits are actively working to overcome longstanding challenges in the grantmaking and contracting processes that have wasted resources, limited results, and hindered their ability to advance their missions.
  

Lack of access to affordable child care remains one of the top concerns for employers, including charitable nonprofits, and employees across the countries. State lawmakers are actively working to reduce burdens through grants, tax credits, salary supplements, and other incentives. Governors in Maine, Missouri, and Ohio have all proposed funding in their budgets to increase child care access. Proposals in other states would extend assistance, promote more child care providers, and support training opportunities. [Read more]

• Why It Matters: After salary competition, the lack of quality, affordable child care is the main reason individuals give for turning down job offers to work at charitable nonprofits. Further, child care nonprofits face difficulty retaining and recruiting staff due to competition from governments and for-profit employers.

Members of Congress will be out of Washington, DC on recess for the next two weeks for Passover and Easter, giving charitable nonprofits the ideal opportunity to meet with elected federal officials back home. The highest priority is to urge officials to raise the federal debt limit to avert a default that would push the US into unprecedented economic crisis. Other policy priorities include restoring and expanding expired charitable giving incentives and addressing nonprofit workforce shortages, to improving child care access and funding essential programs. [Read more]

The Internal Revenue Service is out with its annual Dirty Dozen list of tax scams, including these two warnings to charitable nonprofits and the people who support them.

• ERTC Claims: New to the Dirty Dozen this year is the IRS spotlight on aggressive marketing schemes by promoters to con ineligible businesses and nonprofits to claim the Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERTC).  The IRS is increasing scrutiny on what it calls “aggressive promoters making offers too good to be true.”
  
  
• Fake Charities Scams: The IRS urges everyone to be on alert for scammers using fake charities to dupe taxpayers, especially following major disasters, to turn over money and identity-related information. Bottom line: individuals “should never give out Social Security numbers, credit card numbers or PIN numbers, and they should give bank or credit card numbers only after they've confirmed the charity is real.”

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While state and local governments have until December 31, 2024, to obligate, or indicate how they will spend their share of the $350 Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds, governments continue to make progress and invest in charitable nonprofits.

• Last month, the $35 million Michigan Nonprofit Relief Fund opened the application process for nonprofits with annual revenues of less than $1 million that experienced losses due to the pandemic: small nonprofits could receive funds ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. A separate $15 million grant for larger nonprofits will launch later this spring.
  
  
• The City Council in Gary, Indiana, recently agreed to appropriate $800,000 in ARPA funds for nonprofits and a committee will review applications later this year.
  
  
• In Mississippi, a bill awaiting the Governor’s signature would allow the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors to allocate part of the county’s $11 million in ARPA funds to local nonprofits.
  
  
• As communities develop funding plans, governments and nonprofits can refer to guiding principles for high-impact programs, and recommendations for designing and managing programs that allow more nonprofits to contribute to recovery efforts around the country.
  

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What if you filled out a survey and could trace your responses to actual changes in public policy that improve community wellbeing? That’s the aim of the current Nonprofit Workforce Survey that nonprofit organizations are asked to complete in April 2023. This goal is based not on hope alone, but on the positive results flowing from the 1,000+ nonprofits responding to the previous nonprofit workforce survey conducted in the fall of 2021. If past is truly prologue – and ample numbers of nonprofits complete the survey – then public policy advocacy, media attention, and meaningful results will follow.