Challenges Posed to Social Service Philanthropy by Politics and Government
But, as seen on the previous page, a substantial amount of the funding going into social service sector of philanthropy is from public dollars and government grants. In his article "Social Services and Government," Reingold states that, "these organizations utilize federal public funds to pay for staff, implement training and technical assistance, and support fundraising efforts, among other basic organizational functions," when referring to the well-known organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and Teach for America.
Impact of the Current Administration
In 2017, it was thought that nonprofits of all kinds would run the risk of losing funding during the new Trump administration as a good chunk of funding, especially to social service nonprofits, comes from public dollars. This fear mostly came from the uncertainty associated with President Trump's intentions with regards to policy at the beginning of his term.
Executive Director of Bellefaire JCB (whose main campus is pictured), Jeff Lox, says when structuring Bellefaire's programs the agency tries to align the programs to be as neutral as possible to prevent any major impact on the functioning of Bellefaire as a result of party control changing. By maintaining a neutral mission in most of what an agency does, they can keep in programs and missions that can potentially appeal to the agenda of both sides.
Obstacles such as restructuring program to be neutral is an unfair task that nonprofits shouldn't necessarily have to face, because they are not 100% government controlled, or government entities at all for the most part. But, due to the large about of public dollars on a federal, state, and county level, this is something nonprofits, especially those in the social service sector often must consider.
The opinions of other nonprofit CEO's nationally regarding predictions of the impact Trump's presidency would have can be found in the following linked Forbes article.
