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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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In today's episode, we reveal how to influence critical decisions about your program's federal funding.
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So stay tuned.
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If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place.
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I'm Kath Patrick and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter.
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It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are.
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To have them seeking you out as an equal partner.
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And to have them Bringing opportunities and resources to you.
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This podcast will help you do just that.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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Hey, everybody.
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Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
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I'm your host, Kath Patrick.
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I'm so glad you're here for today's episode.
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If your Nonprofit receives any sort of program- specific federal funding, you are likely subject to at least three levels of decision-making about that money and possibly more.
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If you don't know exactly what the decision-making process looks like at all three levels, and how to influence it, you could be at risk of losing funding, or having adverse decisions made about your funding without your knowledge or input.
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Here's a case where knowledge really is power.
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Whatever federal funding program you're working with, you've probably experienced the reality that it's not perfectly designed.
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There may be services that are critical for your client's success in the program, but that can't be paid for with program funds.
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Or you may have found that the more intensive client centered approach that you use that produces great outcomes isn't all that compatible with the cost performance measures under the program.
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Or perhaps you provide a key service that is listed as optional under the program, and it's hard to get the local decision-makers to place a priority on that service.
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You may also have struggled to understand exactly how decisions about the money are made, and why the priorities are what they are.
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It's easy to wind up feeling frustrated and relatively powerless, and wondering if it's even worth dealing with such a problematic system.
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It might be helpful to know that these are really common problems, experienced by a lot of the non-profits who access federal program funds.
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The good news is it is possible to influence the rules and the decision-making to make things better for your program and the people you serve.
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But you can't do that unless you know what the rules actually are.
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And where there's flexibility in the decision-making about money and or policy.
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So I want to help you get a grip on that so you can improve your ability to influence those decisions.
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And bear with me, cause part of the reason that so many folks struggle to untangle this, is that it's often opaque and pretty complex.
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And what I want to do is break down, in as clear terms as possible, how the decision-making structures work and where the access points are.
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But even as I simplify them, it's going to feel a little gnarly.
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So, here we go.
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It's helpful to understand that a lot of these federally funded social service discretionary programs follow the same general structure.
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And that's what we're going to focus on.
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Most federal funding of social services programs is structured to have decision making occurring at multiple levels of government.
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And the decision-making is primarily about two things.
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It's about how the money gets distributed.
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And then rules about how the funds can be used.
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And that sounds kind of dry, but it covers all the devilish details that can make or break your program's ability to succeed and produce the outcomes you want for your clients.
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And that you know they need in order to thrive.
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Typically, there are three levels of decision making that you need to know about.
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Federal state and local.
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And the easiest way to think about this, is to think about how the decision making follows the money.
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So you start with authorizing legislation at the federal level.
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Usually there is some sort of a formula that prescribes how the money goes from the feds to the state.
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And then the feds disperse that money to the states, according to the prescribed formula.
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They also set conditions and rules for how the money can be spent and what the process for accessing it has to be.
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Then the money flows from the states to the localities who in turn eventually engage nonprofits to provide the services.
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And along the way at each distribution point, the states and the localities also have some decision making authority about both money and policy.
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So at each of these levels, you want to understand how the money flows, and what the rules are about how it gets distributed.
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And a whole bunch of rules around how that money can be spent, who's eligible to receive the services, and very importantly, what services are allowed.
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What is often the case with federally funded programs, is that there is a core set of services that must be provided no matter what.
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And then there's a bunch of services that may be provided.
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And you want to pay special attention to the services that may be provided because that's where all the wiggle room is.
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And a lot of times, the services that are labeled as"may be provided" are the ones that are the most critical for the success of the individual client being helped.
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This is key because if state or local decision makers decide they don't want to support those services, that puts you in a really tough spot.
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And if you've run into this, you know what a challenge this can be.
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Another reason to know all this, is that what is frequently the case is that no matter what decision maker you're talking to at the local or state level.
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If they've made a decision they know you're going to be unhappy with, or that is unhelpful to you.
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They will invariably say, oh no, that's not up to us.
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That was the level above that made that decision.
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If it's a locality, they'll say the state made the decision.
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If it's a state, they'll say the feds made the decision and it's out of their hands.
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There's nothing they can do.
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Ah, too bad.
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So, if you don't actually know what the structure looks like, you won't know if what they're saying is true.
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Why does this matter?
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Because all of those decisions can be influenced.
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But you can't influence them if you don't know who gets to make which kinds of decisions.
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And if you don't know who's in charge of what, you have no way of knowing how to target your advocacy work and your strategic relationship building work.
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The first rule of advocacy is to know which decision maker has control over which decisions.
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And that absolutely applies with federally funded programming.
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Simply put, every one of these decision-making points has the potential to affect you, either positively or negatively.
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The more you're on top of that process, the more likely you are to have those decisions be helpful to you and your work.
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If you ignore it until there's a problem.
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It becomes a lot harder to fix and it could put you in real jeopardy.
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I have seen this happen many many times.
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So let's talk about how all this works and how you can stay on top of it without this becoming yet another full-time job.
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I'm going to walk you through the money and decision-making flow and share some ways to influence those key decisions.
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At the federal level, you have Congress that enacts the authorizing legislation.
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That legislation sets the general rules for the program.
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Which includes key definitions, the scope of the services, eligibility for those services, how funds are to be allocated, and the decision-making roles at each level.
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It also designates which federal agency or agencies will administer the program, and sets the total amount of funds authorized for the program nationwide.
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Then in a separate process, Congress approves an appropriation for funds for the program every year.
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So the authorized level is the ceiling.
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They can't appropriate more than the authorized level.
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But often the appropriation is less than the authorized amount.
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So this part of the process is universal.
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It's true for every discretionary federal program, which are the source of the vast majority of social services programs.
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Now some big exceptions are mandated programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and that's a different topic.
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But no matter what, there's always one or more federal agencies assigned to administer the program and distribute the funds.
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And with the discretionary programs, there's always an annual appropriations process.
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So some key things for you to know at the federal level are which parts of the authorizing legislation affect your work?
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Not all of it will.
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Most of these pieces of authorizing legislation that cover these programs are massive.
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They're hundreds if not thousands of pages long.
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And there might be one part of the legislation that affects the funding for your stuff.
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And there's like 10 other parts that fund other things that don't have anything to do with you.
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So at a minimum, you got to know that part.
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You need to know the federal agency or agencies in charge.
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Every once in a while, Congress will decide to make two massive federal agencies jointly responsible for the administration of a set of funding.
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That's fun.
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Fortunately, that doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen.
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And then within those federal agencies, you want to know which sub agency or department is actually in charge.
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So some examples of this would be like with WIOA the massive workforce development legislation.
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The US Department of Labor is the agency, but the Employment and Training Administration under that is the one that actually runs the part that would affect the programming of local workforce development programs.
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With Ryan White legislation, the Department of Health and Human Services is the federal agency.
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And then under that is HRSA.
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And under that it's the HIV and AIDS Bureau that administers the Ryan White money.
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Community development block grants, CDBG.
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The agency is the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but under that is the Office of Community Planning and Development.
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In each of those cases, it's that sub agency that's doing all the work on this.
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And they're the ones that you would need to actually understand what they're up to.
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And then the last thing you want to know is, is the annual appropriation going up or down over time.
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In any given year.
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Because obviously that has ripple effects, positive or negative throughout the system.
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If you've ever been in a situation where you got word from your local decision-making entity, oh, we're going to have to do across the board 15% cuts this year.
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Chances are that's because the appropriation for that year went down at the federal level and then it just ripples all through the system.
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Okay.
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So let's talk about those sub-agencies a little bit.
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Very often they'll be in charge of developing and issuing additional guidance for the implementation of the program.
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So they will set conditions and rules for how the money can be spent and what that process has to be.
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And this could be in the form of regulations.
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It might also take the form of technical assistance guidance, letters or memos, or what have you.
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And with each of those communications, they're adding more detail and specificity about how things are to be done.
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And sometimes it's to clarify vague spots in the legislation.
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Sometimes it's in response to problems or questions that have bubbled up from the field during implementation.
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So some key things for you to know under that, are what's in the regulations that affects you?
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Because those additional implementation details can be very important.
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And then generally speaking, it's useful to know what other kinds of guidance does this sub-agency issue and on what kind of a schedule, if there is a schedule.
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And it could be consistent or it could be very intermittent.
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It could be they only issue guidance when there's a problem or when they have a new idea.
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Or sometimes it's a monthly thing.
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So you want to just kinda know what the landscape looks like for that.
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That will give you an understanding of what the federal rules look like.
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And the good news is you don't have to figure this all out on your own.
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It's very likely that there are one or more national organizations in your field that are monitoring and analyzing all of this for you.
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Your job is to find those national organizations and get involved in them.
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And access their resources on the federal rules, appropriations and updates.
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And learn the ways of that national organization in terms of how they share that information, and how you can most effectively apply it in your work.
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So you get a solid understanding of that at the federal level.
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And that's your underpinning.
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When you know what's happening there, you know the context for everything else that's happening in the system.
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So now onto the states.
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There's usually some sort of formula prescribed in the law that determines how much money goes to each state.
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The federal agency disperses that money to the states according to the formula.
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And mirroring the federal setup, the state will have a designated agency responsible for administering the program and managing the funds.
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That agency may also be responsible for creating a state plan.
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And establishing performance standards, which is super important.
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The plan and the performance standards structure and what they have to include in those will be prescribed in federal legislation.
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But there are a ton of decisions that get made at the state level about the details of that.
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And that is immensely important to what you're going to be able to actually do with your services.
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For example, if they set a performance measure around how fast a client moves through the process.
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That could be a big problem if your model tends to take longer for whatever reason.
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There may also be a state level advisory body that's mandated by federal law that allows for public involvement.
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And often the intent is for that body to be significantly involved in the decision making process.
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But sometimes what happens is that that body takes a pretty hands-off approach and lets the agency staff make most of the decisions, which the body just then approves without a whole lot of discussion.
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Other times they're really involved.
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It's super important to know how that plays out in your state for your program area, because that's going to tell you how to approach a strategy for influencing those decisions.
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Almost always, the money then flows from the states to localities.
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It might go to cities or counties.
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It might go to other geographic entities that are created by the law that don't otherwise exist.
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For example, the workforce investment areas that are under WIOA.
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And then there are rules for how the states send that money on to the localities.
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Once again, the local decision making structure mirrors that of the state structure.
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And those designated decision-making bodies can set additional rules and requirements and make decisions about how to distribute funds.
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There may be a local advisory body, which may have a lot of influence or a little, just like at the state level.
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So again, your task is to find out how decisions really get made, so you can create a strategy to influence those decisions.
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And it may very well be worth your while to get yourself appointed to that advisory body or one of its committees or work groups.
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So then once the funds have landed at the local, the localities then engage nonprofits to provide the services.
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Finally, we get to your role.
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Sometimes nonprofits make up a small portion of the service providers.
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Sometimes almost all the service providers are nonprofits in a given situation.
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It just depends on the program.
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And you know, this obviously is the part you're already very familiar with since you're accessing funds at the local level.
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So, how do you figure out this giant complicated landscape?
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Well, I find it helpful to sort of work it from the levels that I just went through.
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You start with the authorizing legislation.
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And then you want to know what the regulations say.
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And then if the agency in charge of administering the program has a mechanism for regularly issuing additional guidance, you find out what that is.
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And you can actually subscribe to it directly if you want to.
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But at the very least you want to hook into a national organization..
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And in the authorizing legislation, as a reminder, you're interested in who are listed as eligible providers of services and under what circumstances.
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You're interested in knowing what services are required and which are permitted.
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And if any services are prohibited.
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That doesn't mean that you as a nonprofit can't provide those services, it just means you can't use that federal funding source to provide them.
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Now, as I said, if you don't want to become an expert at deciphering federal authorizing legislation, the very best advice I can give you is to join or subscribe to one or more of the national organizations that advocate on behalf of direct service programs for that funding.
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And pretty much for any significant chunk of federal direct service program funding, there's at least one national advocacy organization that focuses on that and works very hard on making sure that the authorizing legislation is as good as it can be from the get-go.
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And that it reflects the interest of both the direct service providers, which would be you, as well as the people receiving the services.
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And those national organizations do a deep dive analysis of all those questions that I've laid out.
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And generally speaking they make that information available to their members.
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Sometimes there's a cost, but it's usually not prohibitive.
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And that's really your best way to go.
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I do believe it's a valuable skill to be able to read and understand authorizing legislation.
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But that's a lot easier to do if you have a guide.
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So find that national advocacy organization, or organizations plural, who are doing that work and get involved in them.
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And I really recommend that you do more than just join them.
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That you get involved in any work groups or other forums for direct service providers, where you can exchange information and ideas and intelligence about what the states and localities are up to that might help or hinder you.
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And help you think about how to frame your conversation with your local decision-makers.
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Lots of times in those peer forums, you're all experiencing similar problems, right?
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And so you'll hear about what somebody else was able to get done in another state or another community.
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And you can learn about that and say, Hey, maybe I could sell that locally.
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Maybe I could get my decision makers to do that.
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That exchange of information is incredibly valuable.
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It's also just really nice for moral support, quite honestly.
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So you use the materials that the national organization has put out to help you quickly and easily understand the key provisions in the authorizing legislation that are going to affect you.
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Both around rules for service delivery and who can receive the service under what circumstances, but also how the money is distributed.
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Most of the time, the funding that you'll be receiving to provide direct services will come from the local decision makers, but not always.
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In most of these kinds of programs, there's usually some state discretionary money or even a state grant program.
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And the discretionary money can be for things like pilots and demonstrations, other program that the state wants to pursue.
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And they typically have a designated pool of funds that they hold back for those purposes.
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A lot of times the rules around how that money is spent are a lot looser than the ones for the direct programmatic funds.
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So if you're interested in piloting something new or creating a demonstration project to prove the high impact of something that you do, and maybe eventually move the system toward adopting that as the model versus the more restrictive model they have in place.
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You might be interested in engaging state decision-makers in a pilot using their discretionary funds.
00:21:07.958 --> 00:21:09.127
Something to think about.
00:21:10.327 --> 00:21:13.958
So it's definitely important to know what the state funding structure looks like.
00:21:14.651 --> 00:21:23.611
The other thing that you really want to be aware of, is that a lot of times states and localities are really reluctant to spend very much on the optional services.
00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:28.423
They would prefer to just do the required stuff, for a variety of reasons.
00:21:28.814 --> 00:21:35.228
But often those optional services are the ones that are actually critical to a participant success.
00:21:35.487 --> 00:21:49.676
So advocating for not only allowing, but encouraging and rewarding, the provision of a robust set of services that you know are essential to your client's success, may become a primary focus of your advocacy with those decision makers.
00:21:50.554 --> 00:21:57.943
At the local level, one of the most effective things you can do is find out if there's any sort of advisory body or community input structure.
00:21:58.394 --> 00:22:01.604
And make sure that your organization has an official role in that.
00:22:02.114 --> 00:22:04.334
Get onto the advisory body yourself.
00:22:04.733 --> 00:22:07.913
Get involved in one or more of its committees or work groups.
00:22:08.243 --> 00:22:09.743
Yes it's extra work.
00:22:09.773 --> 00:22:13.284
And yes, it tends to be kind of boring and annoying a lot of the time.
00:22:13.733 --> 00:22:22.943
But it's how you find out early on if there are any rumblings about changing funding priorities at the local level, for example, which happens all the time.
00:22:23.574 --> 00:22:31.614
It also puts you in an excellent position to be shaping how the rest of the advisory body thinks about the problem that you solve.
00:22:32.114 --> 00:22:34.124
And that is immensely valuable.
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:41.884
And obviously, whatever the local funding decision-makers are you probably already have relationships with them.
00:22:41.884 --> 00:22:46.349
So I'm not going to hit too heavily on that because I assume you've built those relationships already.
00:22:46.650 --> 00:22:56.967
But obviously the deeper you can make them, the more collaborative you can make them, the more you show up as a problem solving partner with them, all of that is to the better.
00:22:57.116 --> 00:22:59.426
But that I assume is stuff that you're already doing.
00:23:00.517 --> 00:23:06.396
There are two other pieces of strategic relationship building work that can be especially helpful in this arena.
00:23:06.936 --> 00:23:12.277
And one of those is that if your member of Congress or US Senator is on a relevant committee.
00:23:12.696 --> 00:23:17.970
Either a committee that works on the authorizing legislation or on the appropriations for this programming.
00:23:18.416 --> 00:23:22.106
Then work on making them a champion for your stuff.
00:23:22.586 --> 00:23:29.126
They can have an outsize impact on shaping the legislative language every time reauthorization rolls around.
00:23:29.426 --> 00:23:37.237
And most of these federal programs, the authorizing legislation is scheduled to be reauthorized on a regular basis and changes are made every time.
00:23:38.037 --> 00:23:42.366
And, you know, of course this making a champion out of these people is a bunch of work.
00:23:42.696 --> 00:23:48.396
And that will involve educating them deeply on the nuances of the issue and how it relates to the work that you do.
00:23:48.606 --> 00:23:54.309
But if they sit on a committee that is especially impactful, that's work that is worth doing.
00:23:55.259 --> 00:24:02.549
The other thing is to keep your national organizations that you've now built ties with, in the loop with what's going on in your locality and state.
00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:06.599
Yes, they are great for sending information and advice to you.
00:24:07.130 --> 00:24:12.650
But part of how they do their job and do it well, is that they have information coming back to them.
00:24:12.950 --> 00:24:19.493
They have intel coming back from the states and localities telling them what's really going on so that they can be helpful.
00:24:19.794 --> 00:24:21.023
They need to know this.
00:24:21.743 --> 00:24:27.544
And they may be able to help you with additional information from other states that you might not know about.
00:24:27.993 --> 00:24:32.644
They might also have some technical assistance support on how to solve some issues that you're having.
00:24:32.854 --> 00:24:36.364
Because again, they're pulling their knowledge and their expertise from the whole country.
00:24:36.903 --> 00:24:43.374
They're going to have perspectives and support and TA resources that are going to be super helpful to you.
00:24:44.084 --> 00:24:54.819
And as with all things, this will work best if you develop relationships with individuals in those organizations, both in the peer network, but also the staff at the national organization.
00:24:55.269 --> 00:24:58.960
I was that staff for a national organization for many years.
00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:04.690
And I will tell you that it was the people who built relationships with me, that I spent more time with.
00:25:04.900 --> 00:25:13.569
That I took extra time to really walk through the details with them and stay on the phone or the zoom with them until they had everything they needed.
00:25:13.925 --> 00:25:16.473
And then I would follow up and say, how's it going?
00:25:16.923 --> 00:25:20.900
If I just got a cold inquiry, I would still help them.
00:25:21.490 --> 00:25:27.013
But I was less able to help because I didn't know as much about what they were struggling with and what their work was.
00:25:27.253 --> 00:25:32.864
The ones that I built relationships with, I knew a lot about their operation and so I could be more helpful.
00:25:33.074 --> 00:25:37.814
So understand that that dynamic is at play with the national organization staff.
00:25:38.713 --> 00:25:39.134
Okay.
00:25:39.374 --> 00:25:40.874
So that's a lot.
00:25:41.644 --> 00:25:52.589
To summarize, the key lessons around working with federal social services program funding, are to know the key provisions of your authorizing legislation that most affect you.
00:25:53.460 --> 00:25:58.799
Have a clear picture of the funding and decision-making flow for the program at every level.
00:25:59.334 --> 00:26:04.864
Leverage the knowledge and TA of the national organizations that focus on this set of programming.
00:26:05.403 --> 00:26:09.453
And actively participate in those organizations to get maximum benefit.
00:26:09.977 --> 00:26:17.057
Build relationships with the key money and policy decision makers in the program structure at the local and the state levels.
00:26:17.650 --> 00:26:20.470
Get yourself on those local planning bodies.
00:26:21.079 --> 00:26:30.957
And engage with your member of Congress and US senators if they're on a relevant committee, either authorization or appropriations, and work on turning them into a champion for your stuff.
00:26:31.977 --> 00:26:34.750
Doing any one of these will help.
00:26:35.359 --> 00:26:50.767
The more of these strategies you deploy, the greater your chances for influencing the key policy and money decisions at every level that can make it as easy as possible for you to provide the services your clients need to make maximum impact.
00:26:50.886 --> 00:26:54.967
And for you to have the level of resources you need in order to make that happen.
00:26:55.777 --> 00:26:58.446
Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.
00:26:58.747 --> 00:27:01.086
Right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.
