So I’m Blossom Johnston and I’ve been in the philanthropic sector. I work for the Albertson Family foundation as a program officer. I work for two governors helping with their grant making. I’ve been a federal grant reviewer. I’ve been in this sector for a very long time. We’ve never seen anything quite like today. So what we’re going to talk about real quickly, and you’re going to keep trying that, all right, I’m not going to worry about that. So I’m going to put that down and we’re going to just talk. At the beginning of the year, there were some really big changes and it has affected some of our largest nonprofits. Let me give you a little context. We’ve got about 10,000 nonprofits that are registered with the IRS. We have about 8,000 of them registered with the Secretary of State.

They take in over $10 billion a year. Okay, so high level of those 8,000 and 10,000, we don’t know how many are active. But this much we do know that the cuts from the federal government has affected our nonprofit sector in very big ways. So we work with nonprofits day in and day out. That’s our mojo. We work with philanthropists and we work with nonprofits. We’ve worked with over 120 of them in the last five years. So they’re in our ear and they’re like, oh my gosh, what do we do? So we began to think about, okay, if government grants are no longer their revenue source. I don’t know if I like that. So if that’s no longer where they’re going to get their revenue, where are they going to go? Well, where do they go? They go to philanthropy.

They go to the gates, they go to the Hewlett Packards, they go to whoever. So in what we needed to do is we needed to learn what are the philanthropists thinking about in this moment in time. So we did was we did confidential interviews with 13 leaders from 11 foundations. These foundations represented everything from your hyperlocal, like the Idaho Women’s Charitable foundation and the Brant foundation, to regional like the Murdoch foundation, the Lore foundation and Northwest Philanthropy. Together they invest about 150 million in grant making in Idaho. So these are the ones that are really fundamental to keeping the doors open for a nonprofit sector. All right, so here’s what we wanted to know. We wanted to know what this moment in time, how they were thinking about it and whether it was going to change their priorities for giving.

We also wanted to align. So because we worked in nonprofits, we wanted to know what they were thinking so we could align the nonprofits we work with to get the funding. And the third thing we wanted to know is where was there an area for collaborative and bold actions? What that did was it produced these two reports that we’ve done. Bottom line is we’ve got nonprofits that are overwhelmed, but when we talk to the philanthropists, they’re also overwhelmed. They’re getting two to four times the volume of requests for funding than they’ve ever had. They don’t have the staff for that. And so then you begin these long cycles that take you years to get through. Well, in the meantime, your nonprofits are dying on the vine.

So we started asking them, all right, what is the political, the cultural, what are the environmental factors that you are concerned about? And I’ll tell you a quick story. One of these leaders is in the Spokane area, and her sister is married to a Latino, and her children are half Latino. And every summer, they come to spend time with grandma and grandpa and auntie and uncle. They won’t come anymore because of the political climate and the cultural climate in that area. They don’t feel safe anymore. So this is this leader’s personal experience that is playing out in her philanthropic leadership. All across the board, we heard people from different sizes of foundations, different leanings, different focus areas. They’re talking about the harm that’s being done to the philanthropic infrastructure nationally, and they’re worried about it. They don’t know, do we step in?

Don’t we step in? They know they can’t fill the gap. They know they cannot fill the $643 million gap that occurred earlier this year. If they tried, they’d have to give away four to five times what they give away annually right now, which they can’t. There’s no way that they can do that. So then what do we do as people who love Idaho, as people who care about other people? Well, so what we did is once we got the data from the reports, we began to look at how. What are the recommendations? What are the best practices? So I’m going to point out a few people real quickly. Paul Miles here is on our eval team. Amy. Where’d Amy go? Amy Costello back here. She’s on our consulting team. Bill Rauer is the chair of our board. Brian is part of our.

She is the comms wonder. And my Ms. Robin is one of our crew members working with Jesse Tree. So we’ve got these people who are amazing human beings that want to lean in with their time, talent, and their treasure. But we need a whole lot more. We have about 100 people that are leaning in and pro bono ing their expertise, and we’re going to need everyone leaning in hard in order to bridge the gap. That’s all we’re thinking about right now, is bridging the gap that has been created with our current times. We all know that we live in an awesome state, and certain things are prioritized and other things aren’t prioritized. And so we have to.

As Idahoans, we’re going to have to get a lot more vocal about what we’re going to stand for, which for Idaho partners for good, strong families and strong communities, that’s what we stand for. We are developing stronger, healthier, better equipped nonprofits so that they can do that the way we’re doing that. Our methodology is we’re reinventing how people in this room do greater good together. We are not. This is not about me. This is not about Bill. This is not about Paul. This is about everyone seeing where they play and playing. Well, let me just give you a couple of stats because I’m hoping that it’ll kind of help you to frame what’s coming in the next six to 12 months for Idahoans. Let’s go to this. All right. How many of you know that there’s cuts coming to Medicaid? Okay. All righty.

So when we’re talking about Medicaid cuts, health care, Medicaid, we’re talking about 40,000 Idahoans. Okay. And then we’re talking about an additional 35,000 that will probably lose marketplace insurance. All right. There’s also cuts in SNAP, which is the food benefits. We’re looking at 136,000 Idahoans who are currently enrolled and another 20 to 30% that may lose their benefits. When we’re looking at housing, we’re looking at already a half a million that have been cut in HUD grants, immigrant access, we’re looking at new laws that cut prenatal and food assistance for undocumented families. When we think about behavioral health and recovery services, we’re talking about closing recovery programs and 49 million in federal health grants that have been lost and reduced mental health support. Okay. That’s kind of a very grim picture. This is the reality of where we find ourselves as Idahoans.

So what do we do together? Well, first of all, that word together is absolutely fundamental to whatever the picture is that we want for ourselves going forward. Regardless of your political leanings, regardless of your lived experience, and regardless of your Cultural heritage. It is incumbent upon all Idahoans to hear the clarion call, which is what I’m doing today. I’m giving you a clarion call and to respond in whatever way that you deem appropriate for you. But one of the seven recommendations. And so one of the things that came out really strongly in the data was that foundation leaders don’t have time or they haven’t made it a priority to think strategically. So I’m giving you guys all this insight. If you know people who are.

Who give big, have them call timeout on themselves so that they can think about this moment in time and how best to respond. I’m not going to say cut this or cut that. I am going to say think about what it is you care about and support that. If you care about people staying in their houses, go support Jesse Tree or Catch or Leap charities. If you care about food insecurity, go support the food banks. You know, if you’re part of a church, have your church go and adopt one of those local nonprofits right around you. Here’s the seven recommendations. Prioritize time to think strategically. That’s something we all do, no matter what we. What we’re involved in. We need to carve time. The second thing is we need Cross conveners. That’s the beauty of what I’m seeing here today.

Bethany has cross convened in ways that we haven’t seen before. And it’s the power of the collective that we need at this moment in time. So cross convening. We’ve got to build the infrastructure. So here’s the secret about nonprofits. There’s two things that are going to take them out. Their leadership and their finances. Everything else we can fix. If they don’t have leaders who know how to respond to this moment, which includes their directors, by the way, I’m thankful that we have a strong board chair who understands that this is a moment in time that we have to shift. So if their leadership is wanting or if their finances are wanting, they’re going down. And even more so with the pressures of all this stuff, increased population, AI is displacing tens of thousands of people from work.

We’ve got all these cuts, by the way. Individual donations by people are downward trend. So everything that nonprofits count on is now shaken. And so we get to build a foundation that says, okay, we care about each other, and we’re going to ensure that people do not fall off the cliff. The other recommendations are equip foundations, these philanthropic foundations with tools to understand what’s happening on the front lines. Here’s another thing. I did work as the Albertson family program officer. I would go to these conferences. I’ll tell you, sometimes it was hard to stomach because you have people who think they know what to do for other people. And so it becomes their intent instead of what is needed out in the trenches. So please don’t do that. Please don’t think you know better than the people who are actually experiencing what.

What it is that life is throwing at them. Go find out then. Design language. This is another thing driving me a little crazy. But the language between the nonprofits and what they have, the paperwork they do to get some money, okay, the paperwork they do to get the money and what the grantor wants are so disconnected. We’ve got to bring it together. So I’m going to leave you with this because I’ve got to go. But there are ways the tech industry can lean in hard, and that is in these infrastructure things, the systems things, the things that will make it so much easier for nonprofits to deliver the programs and services. You’ve got the keys, you’ve got the creativity, you’ve got the ideas. Lend those ideas to the nonprofit, not just the for profit. With that, let’s call.

Let, let’s call time to unite and let’s work together. And if you want the studies, they’re on our website. Or if you want to email me, I can send them to you. And if you. And if you have any questions, please hit me up. I’ll be here after this. That was kind of a Debbie Downer thing, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, but seriously, guys, I’m not. Because it is a clarion call, and we have an opportunity to step in. Okay, so what happened at Katrina? One of the huge things that came out of that is innovation. Absolutely blew up in their education system, and they. They ended up with one of the best education systems in the nation. So, yes, crisis breeds innovation.