San Diego nonprofits say federal cuts are an ’emergency’ for the sector

San Diego nonprofit leaders declared a state of emergency Tuesday, warning that six months of heavy federal funding cuts have pushed the sector and the communities it serves into crisis.

“In just a few months, federal rollbacks have disrupted vital services and programs, the living conditions of our community,” said Claire Groebner, associate director at Olivewood Gardens, a community gardening nonprofit in National City, at a press conference of the newly formed San Diego Solidarity Network. 

“This is placing San Diego civic infrastructure in a state of crisis,” Groebner continued. “And this impacts all of us from the food that we eat, the air we breathe, the quality of our health care, the quality of our education, our individual and community sense of safety and wellbeing. Everything that we’re experiencing today is interconnected. It’s not just about one person, one community. This is about all of us.”

The network consists of a volunteer group of community service-focused nonprofit leaders and advocates that have come together in the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center in Barrio Logan to host town halls aimed at finding a coordinated response to the shifts in federal policy that threaten many organizations.

The cuts have run deep across San Diego. 

An executive order by President Donald Trump instructing the Institute of Museum and Library Services, among other government entities, to be eliminated to the “maximum extent consistent with applicable law” has pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars from San Diego public libraries and museums like the San Diego Natural History Museum. The Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park also lost several million dollars in National Science Foundation funding.

The Department of Justice slashed funds to The Innocence Center, a group that advocates on behalf of the wrongly incarcerated as well as a $3.6 million grant to Rady Children’s Hospital that trained police and prosecutors in child abuse response. 

Cuts from the EPA included a $20 million grant to the San Diego Foundation and the Environmental Health Coalition for various projects, including the Barrio Logan construction of the Boston Avenue Linear Park and funding for electric buses and clear air programs.

“The EPA terminated this grant because of who it is going to help; low income communities who have unfairly suffered for generations from toxic lung damage, pollution and severe underinvestment,” Amy Castañeda, the Environmental Health Coalition’s policy co-director of land and justice, said Tuesday.

Alondra Alvarado, president and CEO of the San Diego Hunger Coalition, highlighted how cuts are straining San Diegans access to food. The Emergency Food Assistance program had federal funds frozen, resulting in an expected 1.5 million meal delivery to the San Diego Food bank being canceled. 

She warned that many more San Diegans will face hunger if the House-approved Republican reconciliation bill passes the Senate in its current form. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan think tank, estimates SNAP benefits, a national food assistance program, would be cut by 30% by the bill. San Diego County has almost 400,000 people receiving benefits from the program in 2024, according to the CalFresh data.

“It’s not because there isn’t food. It’s because the support that once helped people access food has been slashed. Families are skipping meals – grocery and rent prices remain high. Wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living. Layoffs are rising in key sectors, and many are bracing for a possible recession. Even basic staples are becoming unaffordable,” she said. 

The San Diego Solidarity Network is calling on philanthropy and government to step in and invest to keep organizations from disappearing and, at the same time, working to find ways for nonprofits to work together to support one another and continue to provide services.

In an interview with inewsource, Alan Sorkin, who has worked with nonprofits in San Diego for 35 years and is currently a board member at the Prebys Foundation, said that he believes there is going to “be a real constriction of nonprofits. I don’t know how many are gonna go away. But I’m guessing it’s gonna be a lot because this is not one and done. This is going on for a minimum of four years.” 

A March study by the Nonprofit Institute at the University of San Diego found that local nonprofits were already feeling the impact just three weeks into the Trump presidency, especially those that work with immigrants and refugees. Local nonprofits reported laying off nearly 500 employees, and one in three reported reducing or ending services. 

There are more than 13,000 nonprofits in San Diego County with $28 billion in revenue. More than 3,000 of those nonprofits have paid employees and pay a total of $7 billion in wages, according to the Nonprofit Institute report citing the most recent 2022 data from the IRS.

An analysis by the Policy and Innovation Center, a local think tank, found that the federal government provides about $1.5 billion to higher education and $1.4 billion to other types of nonprofits in San Diego. The largest funder is the Department of Health and Human Services which gives $992 million to broader nonprofits and $725 million to higher education. 

But when looking at which types of organizations rely most on government funding to stay afloat, another analysis found that “organizations that focus on economically marginalized individuals, families, and communities could find themselves at greatest financial risk from sudden changes in government funding.”

Philanthropists caution that private dollars cannot replace the scale of federal investment.

“There’s no way that philanthropy is going to replace federal dollars one for one,” said Megan Thomas, CEO of Catalyst, a hub for funders to work with and connect with local nonprofits. 

“We understand that often the purpose of philanthropy is to seed something or provide something so that the government can take it over and scale it. But what we can do is help stabilize the organizations that are doing this work so that they can adapt in the moment,” Thomas said.

For example, she said, philanthropy won’t be able to replace cuts to federal nutrition programs like CalFresh.

“That’s just not going to happen. But we can support someone like the Hunger Coalition to change the way that they’re operating to help find other resources for those families.”