With all the talk of stimulus money these days, you might expect the nonprofit sector, with its easy access to on-the-ground projects that are “shovel ready,” would be rolling in it. But until recently I had not heard of a single case of stimulus cash reaching a nonprofit.

Then, just recently, I heard from a client that in the space of two short weeks he had applied for and received $300,000 in CDBG money (a notoriously bureaucratic and slow process in normal times) to renovate a food bank warehouse.

This money is real, folks. This may have been the first instance of which I have heard, but it won’t be the last. Billions of dollars are headed for community clinics, both for construction and for service expansion; Congress just authorized dramatic growth in the number of national service slots, and any nonprofit with a facility in need of renovation should be looking for a piece of the stimulus cash.

Whether all this money, much of it highly targeted (and restricted) for construction, will offset the overall decrease in operating cash the sector is experiencing from foundations and local government, remains to be seen.

Tags: nonprofit

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Nonprofit Sector, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.