Next Friday, April 1 (and we promise it’s not an April Fools’ joke), the Center is offering a webinar for nonprofits on the 2022 election, including:

The webinar is part of the Center’s spring series of nonprofit policy briefings. Register today!

A recent national survey of nonprofits found that lack of access to affordable, high quality child care is the second-biggest cause of the current nonprofit workforce shortage. The U.S. Congress and the NC General Assembly are both likely to consider policy solutions to improve access to child care this year. On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing to explore ways to reduce costs of child care and preschool for working families. The National Council of Nonprofits sent a letter to the Senate HELP Committee leaders, including Ranking Member Richard Burr (R-NC), explaining how the inadequate funding for child care creates problems for nonprofits as both employers and as service providers.

More than two years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, charitable nonprofits continue to face financial and operational challenges related to the pandemic and to the nonprofit workforce shortage. As you know all too well, these challenges are making it difficult – and unsustainable – for nonprofits to provide needed programs and services in our communities.

Our elected leaders in Washington, D.C. have the power to help address many nonprofit pandemic and workforce shortage challenges. But for that to happen, we need organizations like yours to join a national effort to persuade President Biden and leaders in Congress to prioritize policy solutions to help solve three major problems hindering the work of nonprofits:

Will you join the Center and 150+ other North Carolina nonprofits in adding your nonprofit’s name to the national sign-on letter urging federal policymakers to enact several specific policy solutions that would address these three issues? You can read the letter (which has been updated with the names of all 1,500+ nonprofits that have signed on thus far) and review this background information to learn more about the specific policy solutions that nonprofits are seeking. Thank you if your organization has already signed on to the letter!

Last week, the Center sent a candidate questionnaire on nonprofit issues to all 535 North Carolina candidates for Congress and the NC General Assembly. The questionnaire is intended to help nonprofit leaders learn more about the candidates on their ballots in the May 17 primary election and the November 8 general election, and also to help candidates have a better awareness of the work of nonprofits. The Center will begin posting candidates’ responses in mid-April. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Center cannot endorse candidates for office or rate candidates based on their responses.

Your local candidates for office are more likely to respond to the questionnaire if they hear from you rather than from the Center. T the Center will soon share resources to make it easy for you to reach out to the candidates on the ballot in your county to encourage them to complete the questionnaire. In the meantime, if you are running for office, we hope you will take the time to complete the questionnaire.

Last year’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) expanded and improved the child tax credit in three important ways:

The expanded and prepaid child tax credit helped lift many North Carolina families with children out of poverty, helping them pay for child care, food, home and car repairs, and medical expenses last summer and fall. Most families with children received half of their child tax credit as monthly payments during the second half of 2021, thanks largely to nonprofits helping these families provide the necessary information to the Internal Revenue Service.

With a bit more help from nonprofits, many families can learn how to claim the second half of their child tax credit payments. Families are due to receive the remainder of their child tax credits as refunds when they file their 2021 federal income taxes. Your nonprofit can do three things to help families in your community access the full child tax credit:

The U.S. Department of Education is overhauling the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program to provide a path to relief for millions of nonprofit and other public service workers struggling under the weight of student loan debt. To help nonprofit employees learn more about the improved access to student loan forgiveness, the National Council of Nonprofits and the Student Borrower Protection Center are offering a free webinar on Accessing Public Service Loan Forgiveness on Tuesday, April 5 at 1:00 p.m. Register here.

Nonprofits often rely on salary surveys to determine whether they are compensating their staff fairly. To help nonprofits get the most current salary data, the Center has partnered with Association TRENDS on the 2022 NC Nonprofit Compensation Survey. It is important for every North Carolina nonprofit to respond to the survey to get the most comprehensive and accurate picture of compensation across the state. The Center has already taken the survey, and we have shared tips from our experience to make it easier and save time for other nonprofits.

Please take the 30 minutes (or less) to complete the survey by April 1. Participating organizations receive a discount on the 2022 report; participating Center members save even more.

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.