Washington area charities take action to prepare for ‘fiscal cliff’

At the nonprofit United Communities Against Poverty, Nina Lewis has a goal for this holiday season: Don’t let one volunteer slip away.

Her position as volunteer coordinator was created in October as part of the charity’s strategy to gird itself against the looming federal budget cuts, which threaten to hack $178,595 from its government funding.

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Lewis has been tasked with combing through the group’s volunteer base to see if she can persuade some to donate cash in addition to their time. The organization hopes that money might help offset a potentially gaping hole in its budget.

“It gets frightening thinking about the cuts,” said Gwendolyn Ferguson, president and chief executive of the Capitol Heights-based organization. “So we have to be more creative in ensuring that we have what we need to function.”

November marks the arrival of peak giving season, but many local nonprofit organizations are more focused on January, when automatic government spending cuts could go into effect through a process called “sequestration.” The combination of budget cuts and tax hikes have become known as the “fiscal cliff” for the danger they present the economy, at least in the near term.

Worried that their government funding could be sapped and corporate giving could be dampened, some groups are taking action to better position themselves to absorb financial shock.

At Whitman-Walker Health, a health center in the District, executive director Don Blanchon and his team have created a fundraising campaign called Neighbors in Need that it hopes will raise $200,000 to supplement its annual year-end giving efforts.

This initiative was devised to create a buffer against a possible 5 percent reduction in public funding for the staff in its HIV prevention and care program. The additional cash would give them flexibility in the new year.

“We want to make sure that in the event sequestration does get us, we want to have other funds available so there’s no disruption in services to our patients,” Blanchon said.

Donations tick up

So far, 2012 has been a turnaround year for some nonprofits, with many seeing donations hold steady or tick up after sliding during the recession and sluggish recovery.

United Way for the National Capital Area is expecting double-digit growth in donations this year, while the Center for Nonprofit Advancement reported that nearly half of its charity members say donors have committed to maintain or increase donations. The Community Foundation for the National Capital Area said its contributions are up 15 percent compared with last year.

The Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area, the authorized workplace giving drive for federal employees, has seen an increase in pledges so far this year compared with the same period last year.

Still, Washington nonprofits have seen in recent years how economic woes can weigh on their coffers. When corporate giving titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put under government stewardship in 2008, the mortgage giants slashed their charitable giving by 40 percent, leaving many groups scrambling to raise money to fill the void.