Judge May Begin Ruling On Nonprofits Today

Already reeling from the Great Recession and a challenging fundraising climate, some nonprofit leaders are waiting on tenterhooks for retired state Supreme Court Judge Kathleen Blatz to rule on which nonprofits continue to receive state funding. Blatz could begin issuing rulings as early as today.

Among these is the , which helps over 1,700 Minnesotans living with severe mental illness manage their aliments and maintain jobs and housing. According to some if its clients, it has a major impact on their lives.

"Without Vail Place, quite honestly, I would not be alive today," said Theresa Dolata.

Many nonprofits receive government funding, whether from the local, state or federal level. In some cases, federal dollars are dispersed through state agencies and if there’s no one at the state level to receive receipts and allocate money, nonprofits are left without that funding.

It could spell trouble for many nonprofits, forcing them to discontinue programming, cut staffing or shutter altogether, either temporarily or permanently.

Minnesota’s 3,750 nonprofits employ one of every nine workers in the state, according to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, earning wages of $13.2 billion in 2009. Slightly more than half of those workers—about 153,000—are in the Twin Cities metro area.

“If (the shutdown) lasts more than three or four weeks, I think it’s at that point that you’re going to start seeing nonprofits getting into the next phase of their contingency planning,” said Frank Forsberg, senior vice president of community impact for the Greater Twin Cities United Way, which has nearly 200 agency partners and helps fund more than 400 programs.

Forsberg said United Way officials work with partners on an ongoing basis to create multiple contingency plans and put cash-flow resources in places to bridge any unforeseen or significant losses of funding, state or otherwise.

With the writing on the wall, he said planning elevated a month ago when a shutdown seemed inevitable.

The United Way, which raised $88.5 million in 2010, altered its disbursement schedule to help its sponsored programs to continue running.

Typically, Forsberg said, United Way pays monthly installments to its partners. To help protect the programs during the shutdown, United Way advanced three months’ worth of allocations for agencies most impacted.

“We are hearing from a lot of our members that they are making a lot of tough decisions,” said Christine Durand, spokesperson for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. Among the kinds of nonprofit work not included in state funding during the shutdown: childcare, domestic-violence prevention and assistance, food assistance, arts and environment and weatherization.

MCN briefings to help nonprofit groups grapple with the effects of a shutdown began three weeks ago and will continue, Durand said. Among the topics: how to lay off and furlough workers.

Their work “touches every Minnesotan in some way, shape or form,” Durand said, but “they can’t run on air.”