Nonprofits to Resume Regional Meetings to Urge State Funding
/In the midst of Giving Tuesday next week, the Connecticut Nonprofit Alliance will resume its education, advocacy and organizing efforts to convince state officials to use a portion of the state’s surplus to fund nonprofit organizations, many of whom have sustained funding cuts in recent years.
A full slate of six local public meetings, dubbed “Funding for Nonprofits: If Not Now, When,” will take place in communities across the state during December, building on efforts that began with a handful of similar sessions this month, in communities including Middletown and Torrington. In total, nearly a dozen sessions will have been held before the legislature reconvenes in February.
Scheduled are:
Dec. 3 - Bridgeport, 9:30am , RYASAP, 2470 Fairfield Avenue
Dec. 4 - Waterbury, 1:30pm , CT Counseling Centers, 50 Brookside Road
Dec. 10 - New London, 1:30pm , Sound Community Services, 21 Montauk Avenue
Dec. 11 - Norwalk, 10:00am , Keystone House, 147 Main Street
Dec. 12 - Hartford, 9:30am , CT Nonprofit Center, 75 Charter Oak Avenue
Dec. 18 - New Haven, 9:30am , United Way of Greater New Haven, 370 James Street, Suite 403
Invitations for public participation note that “with the State of Connecticut's budget outlook the strongest it has been in over a decade, and revenue projected to grow, now is the time to tell policymakers to increase funding for community nonprofits. If not now, when?”
Alliance President & CEO Gian-Carl Casa, writing in the Hartford Courant recently, pointed out that “For more than a decade, since the recession of 2008, state funding for community nonprofits has been cut or not kept up with increasing demand for services. Programs for some of the state’s neediest — substance abuse treatment and mental health clinics, homeless and domestic violence shelters, day and residential services for people with developmental disabilities and re-entry programs for people coming out of prison, to name a few — have been cut back or eliminated, leaving people without services they need.”
“Throughout the recession and the economic recovery, we have seen the need for community-based nonprofit services only grow,” he added.
According to officials at the Connecticut Nonprofit Alliance, “the improved State budget picture gives community nonprofits an opportunity to make up some of the fiscal ground lost over the past decade.
Despite the State of Connecticut's strong financial outlook, some state leaders say now is not the time to ask for more funding – even after a decade of cuts! The only way to fight that mindset is with a sustained and unified statewide effort by community nonprofits across Connecticut.”
That is what the series of public meetings is designed to generate, with the return of legislators to the State Capitol now just months away.
