We are sharing an email we have received from the national organization Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. Please see below for their urgent call to action and your consideration.
Dear North Carolina Alliance Members,
I am the Field Mobilization and Policy Manager with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. I hope you are all holding up well given the circumstances. I have an important legislative update and urgent call to action.
The Senate is very quickly working on an economic relief package for many industries impacted by coronavirus. The Alliance, as part of our Leadership 18 national coalition work, boldly advocated for a $60 billion relief package for loans, grants, and charitable giving incentives for our sector, which is a similar size to the airline industry. This is all moving very quickly - we anticipate everything being decided in the next few hours.
The language in the bill does two destructive things. First, it continues to close off small business loans to all nonprofits over 500 employees (it's open to private and public nonprofit orgs with under 500 employees). But for some reason, they also initially decided to exclude any nonprofit that receives Medicaid.
Due to advocacy work over the weekend from us and our coalition partners, they decided to scale this provision back and create one tiny carve out in the Medicaid exclusion. Now organizations whose "primary service provided by the nonprofit entity is substance abuse treatment and counseling" are eligible. We do not want to split human services in this way! We all receive Medicaid funds for so many critical services - just a short list - behavioral health in schools, residential treatment in child welfare, services in the home for older adults, services to children and families in the child welfare system, services to people with developmental disabilities that are home and community based, care coordination for dual eligible high cost high need Medicaid Medicare utilizers through managed care, home visiting programs for early childhood and more.
I know how critical of a funding stream Medicaid is to all of our members and that this would deem all of you unable to access these large loans that could be so beneficial. This was their attempt at excluding hospitals, using a broad and irresponsible brush to do so. It's imperative that we push back on this - not only for the 500 exclusion, but also because of the Medicaid exclusion. We need to get loud and tell them that this essentially leaves all human service organizations behind. We need to tell them how dire the situation is - whether you are laying staff off, cutting critical services, or making other hard choices. They need to hear it. They need to be educated on this piece and how it will impact their community and your business. Please use the template below.
I would encourage you to reach out to the following staff in your Senator's offices right now.
Thank you for your help!
Dear
______.
I am the CEO of __________________ located in ___________. [INSERT SENTENCE ABOUT ORG, SIZE, AND COMMUNITY IMPACT]
We need your help. We were very disappointed to see that the Senate included an exclusion in the small business loan language that would exclude nonprofit community based human service orgs who receive Medicaid. Similarly, it would exclude community based human services orgs with employees over 500 from having access to these critical loans right now. This will prove highly problematic with unintended consequences that I don't believe the authors intended or are aware of.
I understand the need to keep healthcare orgs who receive Medicaid from getting these loans. But what is not understood is how States are using Medicaid to pay community based human services orgs for child welfare services, services for people with developmental disabilities in community, community mental health, and school based mental health. These are just a few examples of how we use Medicaid to serve our communities. The CBOs who provide these services are multi service organizations that provide the entire continuum of crucial human services in communities. To restrict organizations like ours who work with very low cash margins will likely force many organizations to lay off staff (our sector represents 2% of the American workforce) and force closures.
The other restriction on exclusion of businesses with more than 500 employees should not apply to community based human services nonprofit organizations. Our national network, the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities produced a recent National Imperative report, which provided an extensive 990 review. What we know is that regardless of size, our organizations regardless of number of employees, do not have the ability to operate with sufficient margin to allow them to weather this storm. The layoffs will be huge and have big impact on our community's ability to keep essential human services operating. Our community based human service organizations are essential for providing services during crisis (food access, housing, child care, child welfare, mental health, and more) and are highly vulnerable to the inevitable disruptions the economic crisis is creating given the pandemic.
It is our hope that you can reach out to Senator McConnell's office and your colleagues to remove the size limit and the exclusion for nonprofit community based human services organizations that receive Medicaid from the economic stimulus bill. Loans should be broadly applicable to all nonprofit organizations.
I have been on the phone with colleagues the past few weeks. We are all stretching ourselves in creative ways to serve our communities but the financial challenges are significant. Many of us are on the verge of layoffs. In a few weeks, some may need to shut down. We desperately need immediate access to grants and low interest loans to stay afloat.
Thank you for all you are doing to ensure our nation can emerge from this unprecedented time with a strong economy and citizens who can get back to their lives as quickly as possible.
Sincerely,
