Originally published February 14, 2024 on WRAL News
Destinee Patterson, WRAL Reporter
North Carolina nonprofits are weighing next steps as delays in federal funding persist -- especially those who offer services for victims of sexual assault.
“For a lot of organizations, they're thinking about, if they don't get a grant disbursement soon, do they need to furlough staff? Do they need to think about laying off staff? Do they need to think about stopping or cutting back on services they provide?” said David Heinen with the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awards grants through its Rape Prevention and Education program. The money flows through the state Department of Health and Human Services. Then, they send that funding out to our local nonprofits.
The money was supposed to be disbursed Feb. 1.
According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, 10 nonprofit organizations are impacted by the delay: Alice Aycock Poe Center for Health Education, LGBTQ Center of Durham, OASIS, Inc., Orange County Rape Crisis Center, OurVoice, Safe Space, Stand Up Speak Out, Robeson County Rape Crisis Center, NC Early Childhood Foundation, and the NC Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
The department could not provide how much money each organization was set to receive.
Monica Kearney, the executive director of Safe Space in Franklin County, said her budget now has a hole of tens of thousands of dollars.
"Just in operation, it's $25,000. If you include the salary piece, we're looking at $95,000 from that grant," she explained. "In rural communities, we're already struggling with resources."
One of her staff members has not been able to come to work for weeks.
"The RPE funding requires that there's a person whose 100% job is to work this program. She is not able to be here because of this grant. She is, in essence, in a state of 'wait,'" Kearney told WRAL.
A judge ordered the Trump administration to restore frozen funding. However, NCDHHS is not able to disburse funds. Spokesperson Summer Tonizzo sent WRAL this statement via email:
“As of 2/13/2025, NCDHHS has not yet received the Notice of Award (NOA) for the Rape Prevention and Education Program for the funding period 2/1/2025-1/31/2026. We have followed up with the CDC on the status but have not heard back.”
“This is a five-alarm fire,” said Rachel Valentine.
She is the executive director of the Orange County Rape Crisis Center. She is considering the tough decisions that could be coming down the pipeline.
“We're creating a scenario, a budget scenario, that is based on the idea of being an entirely locally supported organization. Our current budget is about 65% federal funding,” Valentine said. “The easiest thing to do would be to just to say, ‘no more hospital accompaniment, no more court advocacy, no more support groups, no more therapy, no more prevention education.’ We essentially just become a 24-hour hotline.”
Valentine says this is just the beginning of the uncertainty.
“Is it going to be a total faucet shut off, where nonprofits just don't get funds anymore? Or is it going to be a slow burn, where eventually they just continue to add more and more stipulations to the funding?” Valentine questioned.
