Changes in federal policy have shaken nonprofits reliant on grant dollars to the core.
For South Dakota, advocates say that could mean less services and more gaps in areas like child care.
South Dakota could be the quintessential low tax, low services state. While that comes with certain benefits, that also means many of those services are sustained by donation-based nonprofits.
Chris Huber is the CEO of the Black Hills Area Community Foundation.
“Nonprofits are really the invisible backbone of our community, right? They provide so many services from childcare to our news, to affordable housing, to food to arts," Huber said. "Without them, we’re not going to have a thriving South Dakota or a thriving Black Hills.”
That has inspired the BHACF to partner with the John T. Vucurevich Foundation to launch the Sustaining Black Hills Nonprofits Fund, specifically targeting nonprofits facing financial disruption.
“You work with nonprofits every day, and you might not even think about it," Huber said. "I take my son to school, his daycare is a nonprofit. After that I work out at a community wellness center – that’s a nonprofit. Generosity is non-partisan. This isn’t about federal policy, that’s one of the factors here. This is about deciding what we care about as a community, as a Black Hills community, as a South Dakota community and saying, ‘we can’t let this go away’.”
Huber said now isn’t the time for nonprofits to shy away from the reality of their situations.
“What we’ve found out is nonprofits are not okay," Huber said. "More than 80% said their funding has been affected already, or they expect it to be affected. At the same time, only one respondent said donors are giving more.”
The Vucurevich Foundation and BHACF are running a survey to gather information on how nonprofits are being impacted. A link to that survey can be found here.