Op-Ed: Nonprofits and the Federal Budget Crisis

As you can see, our current revenue is below the level of spending, and in about 10 years all discretionary spending including national defense would need to cease to fund Social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and interest on the debt.

These are the facts and the situation our political leaders are now having to deal with, having failed to address them for the past 20 years. Those of us in the charitable sector may clearly see that proposals from the USPS and from President Obama are wrongheaded, but one has to understand the context in which they are made to understand just how difficult the battles will be to preserve essential components of our civil society.

I do not suggest that we are wrong to engage in this fight on behalf of our sector, because I truly believe that a healthy charitable sector is significantly more important to our country’s future than a larger or better funded government. I just think it is critical to understand that our arguments cannot be about how “nice” it would be if we could encourage the wealthy to make donations or how much it would “hurt” fundraising to see reductions or elimination of nonprofit postage rates. No. Our arguments have to be about the critical nature of the services our sector provides and why our sector is more efficient and effective at providing those services at a lower cost than the government. The stakes are too high to take any other approach.
Geoff Peters is president and CEO of CDR Fundraising Group.