How to Successfully Advocate for Your Funding on Multiple Fronts at Once

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You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast.

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In today's episode, we share the most effective strategies to help you fight for your funding on multiple fronts at once.

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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.

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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, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner and to have them.

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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 there folks.

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Welcome to another episode of 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 because we need to talk about an emerging reality that I'm hearing from virtually all of my clients is their number one challenge right now.

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Of course, everyone is dealing with wildly unpredictable federal funding.

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The threat of it's being cut or eliminated or suspended or all those things at once.

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There is a lot of chaos by design from this administration around federal funding for safety net services.

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We've been dealing with that and we've been talking a lot about that on the podcast.

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But what I wanna address today is the additional reality that the federal funding picture is destabilizing other funding sources as well.

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And so we as nonprofit leaders have to deal with the whole ball of wax.

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As if the massive potential cuts to federal funding weren't enough, we also have completely incoherent and wildly fluctuating policy on tariffs coming out of this administration, which is having a huge impact on the stock and bond markets and have the potential to do significant damage to the entire economy.

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All that chaos and uncertainty is destabilizing other funding sources including state and local government funding, as well as foundation grants and corporate funding.

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The combination of potential federal funding cuts and destructive trade policies is stoking fear and uncertainty across the board among all sorts of funding decision makers.

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State and local governments are worried about potential major hits to their revenue.

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The hit to the stock market is affecting the bottom line for foundations.

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The value of their endowments are down substantially right now.

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And corporations feel like they can't plan because there's zero certainty of anything with this administration.

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A lot of these decision makers are looking at all that and saying, geez, we better pull back.

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We don't know.

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We don't know how much money we're actually gonna have to spend.

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So best if we just pull back right now.

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The cascading effects of all this means that just as we're, fighting for our federal funding, and at the same time we're going around and trying to shore up our alternatives to federal funding, and then we realize that those alternatives are facing headwinds as well.

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This carries a number of strategic implications for us, but I wanna call out some very specific implications that have to do with your advocacy response to this situation.

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Number one, do not stop fighting for your federal funding! Double down on your efforts to ensure that your federal funding remains stable and secure.

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This is not a done deal.

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The administration wants you to think that it's a done deal, that it's over.

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There's nothing you can do.

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They want you to think that about everything they're doing, but most particularly the cuts.

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They want everyone to think well, that's just it.

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Musk and Doge came in and they did their thing and well now that's just how it is.

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The government will be smaller and there won't be any money and we will get rid of those pesky safety net programs and then we'll get our so-called big beautiful bill that'll give tax breaks to the billionaires and corporations and we'll pay for it by taking away resources from average members of the community.

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That is not a done deal.

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And it will not be a done deal if we stop it.

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And the only way we can stop it is through organizing and creating a lot of noise and a lot of pushback.

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And making it basically be more costly politically for members of Congress to go along with this than it is for them to fight back.

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So.

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If you didn't listen to last week's episode, episode 89, about how to connect with and have an impact with your members of Congress while they're home in their districts for their district work periods in late April, and again in late May, those are gonna be absolutely critical opportunities for influence.

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We have to keep at that.

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We have to use everything we can to make sure that we are on the case with our members of Congress, that they don't let up, that they don't let this happen, that they preserve federal funding for the services that you provide and for the outcomes that those services generate.

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At the same time, we have to engage local and state government officials and philanthropic funders, and don't let any of them wimp out.

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Because they're in a little bit of a panic too.

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They're looking around going, oh my God, we're about to have a terrible budget deficit.

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A lot of states, a lot of cities and counties are already panicking and reining it in.

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And telling people, well, I don't know.

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We may not be able to fund things the way we used to because we don't know what the revenue picture looks like, and on and on.

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People are telling me they're starting to hear the same thing from philanthropic funders as the stock market craters this past week.

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So yeah, they're gonna say stuff like that.

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But what I encourage you to do is to not accept that at face value.

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Hear it and understand, yes, of course they are facing the same level of uncertainty that we all are, but that doesn't automatically mean that the course of action for them should be to cut back on services that people in the community depend on.

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That's in fact the opposite of what they should be doing.

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But when things get uncertain and when there's the possibility that there will be less money to go around, the immediate instinct is to pull in their horns and start cutting back to try to get ahead of the problem.

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We need to push back on that and challenge them when they say that that is the best course of action.

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Because in fact, it is not the smartest course of action.

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It is not the most strategic course of action.

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But we have to help them see that.

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And here's the thing.

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The messaging that we use in that process of engaging both members of Congress, state and local decision makers and funders is going to be key.

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That messaging needs to be specifically calculated to achieve these outcomes under very challenging circumstances.

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There are a lot of things in the decision maker's minds that are working against you.

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There are a lot of external factors working against you.

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The chaos is real.

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The crashing of the stock market is real.

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The increased prospect of a recession is real.

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It's bad out there.

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So it's not that these decision makers are hallucinating.

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They're right that stuff is crazy and bad and scary.

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We know this'cause it's crazy and bad and scary for us too.

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But the question is, what do we do in response?

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And it's what do we do as nonprofit leaders in response?

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But it's also what do these decision makers do in response?

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And we have to help them see clearly about what the right strategic choices are.

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And to do that, our messaging has to be far more strategic than we can sometimes get away with.

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In fact, the effectiveness of your messaging will be the primary determinative factor in whether or not you are successful in reorienting these decision makers and getting them to see the priorities the right way and make decisions based on those priorities.

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The problem is your standard messaging is unlikely to get the job done.

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This situation calls for very specific messaging components.

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Now these are components that we talk about a lot of the time on the podcast.

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But in this particular scenario we have to be extra focused and extra disciplined in making sure that our messaging is tailored for the specific impact of two things.

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One, getting these decision makers to see what the priorities should be in the face of all the scary chaos and crazy, and the prospect of reduced resources hanging over their head.

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And two, to make strong commitments to funding those priorities.

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We gotta get them to see clearly.

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We gotta get them to see the priorities and we gotta get them aligned with the understanding that making sure that we maintain critical services for the most vulnerable members of the community is essential.

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It is particularly essential in chaotic and difficult economic times.

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Because the people who are least able to roll with it and to come out on top are the folks that we serve.

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So in this context, you wanna focus your messaging on three main things.

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You wanna focus on the specific impact of your services on the lives of the people you serve.

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And this is best done through story.

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You want to paint a vivid picture of what the person's life is like as they deal with the problems they're dealing with that you help address.

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So whatever issue area you're involved in, whatever aspect of helping people thrive you focus on.

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You focus on those pieces and how they impact the person's life and their ability to thrive, or even get from one day to the next, and the ripple effects that it has on their family.

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You describe what their situation is like before they come to you.

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And then you describe what changes in their life for the better, how their lives are transformed, how they are more able to thrive, and by extension, more able to contribute back to the community when they receive the services that you provide.

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This is a case where the services themselves take a complete back seat.

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The main point is the impact on the people you serve, the members of the community who are helped, and how it changes their lives in dramatic and powerful ways.

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Cause you need that picture of what it looks like when they don't have help, and then what it looks like when they do have help.

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When they're in the middle of the problem and struggling, and when they have the help that your services provides and they're struggling far less.

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And you talk about how that changes things and what the ripple effects are, what they're now able to do that they couldn't do before, what's changed for them.

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That picture has to be front and center in every decision maker's mind.

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Because until they get that, they're just thinking numbers.

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They're just working the math problem.

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What do we do about these reduced or potentially reduced resources and how do we plug the holes?

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So there's that piece of the messaging equation.

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The second piece of the messaging equation is what that picture starts to look like for the people you help if that funding is disrupted or taken away or dramatically reduced.

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Again, this is not about the impact on your program.

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It's not about the impact on a specific service.

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It's about the impact on the people who are served.

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What happens to them?

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Do they go back to the problem they were in?

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Do they go back to something even worse?

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So first they've gotta have that picture in their head, and then they need to get the picture of what happens if you take the funding away or disrupt it or reduce it.

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What's the impact on the person being served?

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And how many of those people are there in the community?

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Is this a little problem?

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Is this five people whose lives will be materially worse off?

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Or is this 500 people or 5,000?

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That matters.

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You paint the picture vividly, but then you flip to the left brain and say, and that's not just a handful of people.

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That's x number of people in this community.

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And when you multiply that effect over X number of people, pretty soon you've got a crisis on your hands that's gonna make things way worse.

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It's gonna stress all kinds of systems.

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Those people have to go somewhere.

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Their lives are going to get materially worse.

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And when that happens, then you've got people who have even higher levels of need and need even more support from somewhere.

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And then that's the third piece of your messaging, is what is the cost to the community, to the state, to the government, to other systems in the community, like emergency care systems, hospital systems, other networks of systems that help take care of people.

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What's the cost on all of those fronts of failing to solve the problem, or of solving it halfway in an effort to save money?

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Cause here's what happens.

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In the best of times, decision makers are trying to reduce all of this stuff to a spreadsheet.

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They're inclined to say, okay, well if we spend this over here, then that's money that's not available to spend over in this other category that I really care about and I wanna do something with.

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And so they tend to look at direct services that help people, strictly from the cost side of the ledger of what it costs to provide the service.

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What they almost never look at is what is the cost of not solving that problem?

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And there is always a cost.

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Always.

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And often the cost of not solving the problem, if you're honest about it, if you take a look at the cascading effects of not solving the problem.

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Those costs wind up being far, far greater than the cost of actually solving the problem and really dealing with it.

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And delivering high quality services that actually get people on a better path.

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Now, slapping a bandaid on it and dealing in half measures'cause you didn't wanna spend a lot of money and so you went with the bargain service or the incomplete service and said, well, that'll be good enough.

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We need money for other things.

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So we'll just spend a little bit over here.

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And then surprise, surprise, it didn't really solve the problem.

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So now you're out double money.

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You're out the money you spent on the half measure and you're now dealing with the larger costs of this problem not being solved.

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So we have to become absolute messaging ninjas at getting decision makers to see the cost of failing to solve the problem fully.

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Because that's what we do.

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We are in the business of solving problems.

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That's what we do, and we're really good at it.

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And when you deliver a high quality service that deals with whole people, and not just a little piece of them, but understands that services need to be individualized and focused and tailored so that they will actually help the person become stronger, healthier, more capable, more able to earn a living or more able to move to their best health, or to move into stable housing and stay there and be able to maintain that.

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Or whatever it is that you do.

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The kinds of services that help people do that when they have been in a place where they're dealing with a lot of challenges.

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A lot of the problems that we solve are not easy to solve, and that's why we've developed these carefully designed, tested, and proven services that really work and really solve the problem.

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So that when we solve it, it tends to stay solved.

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And people are in a better place and they stay in that better place.

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And then they're able hopefully to make even more progress.

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Not always.

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Depends on the person and the situation.

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But a lot of times.

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So you only wanna say what's true, obviously.

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But we have to get really good at this.

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Because especially in times of financial crisis and perceived scarcity and sort of the doom of lack moving in upon us, decision makers get really focused on super basic arithmetic.

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And they stop being very good at doing a sophisticated analysis of a problem or a sophisticated analysis of investment in solving the problem.

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And we have to be there to show them that sophisticated analysis and help them see it so that they can make the smart decision, the wise investment decision, and not get panicked into making shortsighted unproductive decisions about how to spend a smaller pool of resources.

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That is our challenge.

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That's not easy.

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It's simple, but it's not easy.

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And what I'm finding is that I am spending about 90% of my coaching time with my clients on this exact set of issues and on this exact set of messaging strategies.

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And so what I'm getting ready to do in the next few weeks is I'm preparing to launch a group coaching program that will tackle exactly this problem.

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That will create a coaching opportunity for a limited number of people to come in and be part of a group, where there'll be some training, but most of it will be coaching and helping you to get your messaging dialed in so that you can address this pressing need.

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I coach on a lot of different things, but what I'm seeing right now is there's nothing more important than this.

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So if that sounds like something you'd like to be a part of, go ahead and shoot me a message.

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You can reach out to me through the podcast website or through the podcast LinkedIn page, and I'll drop those links in the show notes.

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I'm still designing this, so I I don't have all the details for you right this second, but I wanna put that out there because I think this is so important.

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In the meantime, this is a strategic framework for you to work from.

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And the most important thing is don't give up.

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Don't give in.

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Push back and insist on smart decision making, smart investment making on the part of all of these decision makers.

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We can do this and we will.

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Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.