Taking Action: Responding to Federal Funding “Pause”
The Trump administration’s order to “pause” a wide swath of federal grants and contracts, announced last night, has staggering implications for millions of people and the nonprofits that serve them. We are working with allies across the country to decode the memo (certain direct assistance appears to be exempted) and determine what programs may actually be impacted by the order, which is set to take effect today at 5pm EST. Read the full memo here.
UPDATE/1p PT 1/29: OMB order to “pause” federal grants and contracts is rescinded.
UPDATE/4p PT 1/28: Judge AliKhan temporarily blocked the action (through Monday 2/3).
In the meantime, a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order has already been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the White House Office of Management and Budget from pausing all federal agency grants and loans. The National Council of Nonprofits, of which CalNonprofits is an active member, filed this motion together with public health and small business leaders, represented in court by Democracy Forward.
We will continue to work with NCN to stay abreast of this reckless action at the national level. You can keep up-to-date on the recent flurry of executive orders and their potential impact on nonprofits via this excellent NCN resource.
Here in California, we want to hear from you. Let us know about the potential impacts of this funding freeze on your organization and on your ability to serve your communities. We as a community need to be able to illustrate, in stark and specific terms, exactly how devastating and dangerous this and other recent actions in the Executive Orders can be.
HOW YOU CAN TAKE ACTION TODAY:
- Take our brief survey here.
- Let your congressional representatives know how this impacts you directly.
Finally, this administration clearly knows that cutting off billions of dollars in funding support for services critical to millions of Americans will sow fear and chaos; this is undoubtedly also the point.
We will need to meet this moment together, with collective strength and collaboration. One of our first steps is our Thursday webinar, Preparing the Nonprofit Sector for Trump 2.0, which could not be more timely. Be sure to register and join us as we discuss not just what challenges might lie ahead, but what’s happening right now and how we can best protect our communities and our missions. This webinar is free and open to all.
