With money matters still complicated by the pandemic, Macon County’s nonprofits can’t count on quite as much help from the county government and their community funding pool this year.
The 2021 Macon County Community Funding Pool was cut in half from $75,000 to $37,500 when the county passed their budget in July of 2020. The deadline for applications is coming up soon and nonprofits that apply for support each year are starting to feel the heat. Many of them depend on public funding to maintain their average level of service.
“This is funding that is vital for the day-to-day operations of the center and is often some of the most difficult funding to secure,” said Alisa Ashe, executive director of KIDS Place.
The reduction is magnified by the loss of other funding sources. The Town of Franklin cut its community funding pool entirely in 2019 and state and federal programs have scaled back since the rise of COVID-19. KIDS Place, for example, is impacted by a 67 percent decrease in statewide funding for children’s advocacy centers sponsored through the Victims of Crime Act fund. Ashe said this is a particularly inopportune time for community resources to lose money.
“This all comes during a time that has been particularly hard on children and families,” Ashe said. “We have seen an increase in requests for services, especially mental health treatment.”
Local support also has a snowball effect on securing what state and federal funding remains available. Larger entities like REACH of Macon County can’t provide all of their services without larger grants that often demand matching money from local bodies like the county commissioners.
“Currently, REACH uses the county funds to leverage additional state funds that helps support our 24-hour crisis line, shelter services, court advocacy and other critical services,” said Andrea Anderson, executive director of REACH of Macon County. “With a large reduction in local funding, it could truly impact our ability to qualify for larger grants that require a match, which could reduce our ability to meet the need for victim services in our community.”
Not every nonprofit will be in jeopardy due to less public money to go around. In fact, the timing with the pandemic is convenient for some of them. The Macon County Arts Council, for example, has less opportunity to put funding towards programs for local artists because of social distancing concerns and probably couldn’t effectively use all of the money they would ask for in a normal year.
“Because of COVID, we can’t do all the work we would do in the past, so we’re in a position where we need less financial support,” said Bobbie Contino of the Macon County Arts Council.
However, Contino also serves as the pool’s secretary (members recuse themselves from decisions concerning organizations they are connected to) and isn’t as confident about how other nonprofits will fare. She worries that the community is leaning harder on nonprofits than ever before this year because of the pandemic, so she thinks less money to go around in general will be a problem.
“It should be a concern in our community that these organizations are working harder to deal with the pandemic and that we still have fewer resources to allot to them,” Contino said.
The simple explanation behind the issue is financial insecurity. The Macon County Board of Commissioners decided on the cut last summer when coronavirus was still a fairly new concern and there was no telling what kind of revenue shortfall the county could expect when it was all over. The pandemic still isn’t over, of course, and board chairman Jim Tate said it was the prudent move to make at the time.
“In July of 2020, when this budget was passed, Macon, like all counties across the state and nation, was faced with a great degree of economic uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Tate said. “As a result, Macon County had to make numerous budgetary sacrifices, including the community funding pool, that directly impacted our budget as well as the budgets of outside organizations which our budget helps to support. While these were difficult decisions, they enabled us to maintain prior year service levels in areas such as public health, law enforcement, EMS, DSS, etc., upon which the majority of our citizens depend while overcoming a tremendous shortfall in revenue.”
However, the original projection of this fiscal year’s revenue shortfall was $951,000, which Tate said looks like somewhat of an overreaction now. He says that restoring some of the community funding pool before the application period ends isn’t out of the question.
“We are meeting next week to have a mid-year budget review, and it appears that our revenues are much higher than expected,” Tate said last week. “I do expect us to discuss the capital budget items and other budgetary items that were cut and possibly immediately fund.”
Commissioners will hold their mid-year budget review meeting at noon on Thursday, Feb. 4 at the Macon County Courthouse.
Nonprofits interested in applying for funding from the Macon County Community Funding Pool have until Friday, Feb. 26 to apply. For more information on how to apply, go online to www.maconnc.org/community-funding-pool.html or contact Bobbie Contino at 828-524-2787 or arts4all@dnet.net.