Last week, Senator Jim Burgin (R-Harnett) filed a bill (S.894) that would address a variety of issues that nonprofits have experienced with their grants and contracts with the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), including late contracts, late payments, underpayment for indirect costs, midstream changes to contract terms, and burdensome application and reporting requirements. Click here for a more detailed summary of what the bill would do.

The bill was filed because of your advocacy and the advocacy of other nonprofits around the state. Dozens of nonprofits have provided feedback to the Center about these issues, both in response to our action alert earlier this month and in conversations and communications over the last decade. Now, we need your quick help to get legislators to pass the bill – or include it as part of the state budget – during the short session this month.

Many of you have shared with the Center details about challenges your nonprofit is facing with your grants and contracts through DHHS. Most nonprofits that responded requested that the Center not share their name with legislators or government officials. The Center will, of course, honor these requests and not share the name of any nonprofit that hasn’t expressly given us permission to do so.

To get legislators to take action this summer to fix these contracting issues, it would be helpful to be able to identify a few nonprofits by name with specific examples of the contracting issues they are experiencing with DHHS and the impact of these issues on their operations, services, finances, and staffing. Legislative leaders could decide early next week whether to take up nonprofit contracting reform legislation during this year’s short session, so we’ll need to share stories with them as soon as possible.

To help us make the case for these reforms, please let us know today or this weekend if we can use your nonprofit (and identify your organization by name) as an example. It would be helpful if you can share with use:

1.     Your organization’s name;

2.     Details of issues your nonprofit has experienced with grants and contracts; and

3.     The impact of these challenges on your operations, services, finances, or staffing.

If you’ve already shared these details with us and you’re willing to share your nonprofit’s name and story with legislators, let us know that it’s okay for us to use your organization’s name (you don’t have to rewrite the details you’ve already shared with us).

Yesterday, the NC Senate gave final approval to a bill (H.B. 149) that would make a variety of healthcare policy changes, including expanding Medicaid coverage to adults with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level. The bill, which passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support, includes several major policy provisions aimed at expanding access to healthcare in North Carolina. These include:

State legislative leaders are currently working on details of the state budget for FY2022-23, which will likely be finalized later this month. Legislators are considering including a variety of tax law changes in the budget as a way to provide economic relief to individuals and businesses that are suffering from inflation and from the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As you well know, nonprofits are also facing significant financial challenges due to increased demand for services, workforce shortages, and rising prices for goods and services. To help provide some economic relief to nonprofits, the Center is asking legislators to consider adding a new state tax credit for charitable contributions in the tax package that is likely to be a part of the state budget. We’ll let you know if and when there is a need for your nonprofit to take action to advocate for lawmakers to create this tax incentive for charitable giving.

A new state law that took effect on January 1, 2022 requires local government elected officials who serve on nonprofit boards to recuse themselves from discussions or votes on grants, appropriations, or contracts with nonprofits on whose boards they serve. The law doesn’t actually prohibit local elected officials from serving on nonprofit boards. Nonetheless, earlier this year, several nonprofits told the Center that they have had city council members and/or county commissioners resign from their boards as a result of the law. The Center recently learned that some counties and municipalities are changing their procedures for funding nonprofits to ensure that local elected officials can continue serving on nonprofit boards.

If your nonprofit has local elected officials on your board – or if county commissioners or city council members have recently resigned from your board – please send us a quick email letting us know:

As we hear from nonprofits, we’ll keep you posted about possible changes to the law and ways your nonprofits can engage in advocacy efforts.

A bill (H.B. 1160) filed in the NC House of Representatives last Friday would limit the ways that private entities, including charitable nonprofits and private foundations, can fund elections in North Carolina. The bill would only allow private donations for election-related purposes to be made to the NC State Board of Election and would require them to be distributed equally among North Carolina’s 100 counties and to be used only for upgrading voting equipment. In the past, some nonprofits and foundations have made grants to county elections boards to help ensure that there is adequate funding to ensure that elections are conducted smoothly and equitably in their communities. This bill could limit the ability of nonprofits to support community efforts to promote equity in the election process.

Last week, through a partnership between the NC Office of Strategic Partnerships and the NC Department of Information Technology, the state of North Carolina added a new Grants Page to its website. The Grants Page links to various grant programs across state agencies. The page is searchable by key word and can also be exported into a spreadsheet that you can download. The Grants Page is designed to make it easier for nonprofits seeking state grants to identify possible grants without having to look through dozens of state agency websites.

The Center is appreciative to Governor Roy Cooper’s office for developing this resource to make grant navigation easier for nonprofits. We encourage you to share the Grants Page with other nonprofits in your network. The state is continuing to update the page to add any grant programs that are missing; let us know if you know of another state grant program, and we’ll pass it along to our friends in state government to add to the Grants Page. 

National Voter Registration Day (September 20) is a great opportunity for nonprofits to ensure that their staff, volunteers, and community members are registered to vote. Sign up to join the nationwide effort to register hundreds of thousands of voters on September 20. As an official partner, your nonprofit will receive a free voter registration kit and access to other opportunities to support your nonpartisan voter registration work.

The Center provides Nonprofit Policy Update each week as a benefit to its nonprofit members. However, to help all North Carolina nonprofits respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we're temporarily providing this newsletter to non-member nonprofits. Don’t miss out – become a member to ensure you continue receiving these updates along with many other valuable benefits.