History of Social Service Nonprofits and Government Funding
In the 1960s, federal aid became substantial and about 4.4% of the public social welfare budget started to go into social service organizations. There are disputes of how much of social service philanthropy is government-funded, an accepted estimation, made in 1999, is shown by the following diagram:
Around this boom of funding and social services agencies, Cleveland's own Bellefaire JCB grew in size and reoriented its mission to tend to children’s mental health, rather than just functioning as an orphanage like it had for decades prior. Now they provide a range of mental health services and social services to children and their families. Similar to many social service agencies, a large portion of Bellefaire's funding comes from government entities at a local, state, and federal level by means of the juvenile court, children’s services, the mental health board, and Medicaid.
One reason some nonprofits sought after government/public funding is that private donors started to lose interest in consistently funding projects (Reingold). In an interview with Bellefaire’s Executive Director, Jeffery Lox, Lox discussed how when the economy is doing poorly, people tend to give less. In this case, an agency's income of charitable dollars may run low. This is one of the benefits of having other, bigger sources of funding, such as public dollars, to maintain the agency as best as possible when philanthropic dollars run low.
