For nonprofits, the freeze is mostly over. The worry is just beginning.
Last week, the Trump administration briefly froze all federal grant spending, cutting off funding to nonprofit groups that do work under a government contract. It lasted all of two days. Then the memo that announced the freeze was rescinded, and two federal judges blocked it, for good measure.
But this week, many nonprofit groups said they still felt frozen, or at least chilled.
For some, that was because their funding actually remained blocked into this week, despite what the administration and the judges had said. Those groups laid off staff and cut back on services — canceling job training in West Virginia, immigrant services in Wisconsin and help for disabled children in Vermont.
For the lucky others whose access to the funds was renewed, the episode demonstrated how easily the government could break their finances, by canceling contracts that previous administrations had agreed to. This vulnerability has forced them to slow spending, hand out pink slips and scrub websites of content that the new administration might deem too “woke.”
None of them knew if it was enough to inoculate them from further pain.
“It just injects such a significant element of uncertainty,” said Sharon Content, the executive director of Children of Promise, NYC. Her group relies on federal funding for a program that allows 6- to 18-year-old children to visit, call and write letters to their parents and siblings in prison.
On Monday, she said the money remained frozen, without an explanation. But the next day, she was finally able to access the funding. “How do we plan, long term?” she said.
