The Hard Truth About Federal Funding and Philanthropic Giving

By Kenneth Braswell, CEO, Fathers Incorporated

I read Denis Dunn’s recent opinion piece in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Trump Funding Cuts Show Why Nonprofits Should End Reliance on Federal Grants,” with deep interest, and if I’m honest, a bit of head scratching. 

On the surface, his premise makes sense: Government dollars come with strings, and those strings can tug organizations away from their missions. As I sat with the article, however, I couldn’t help but filter it through the lived experience of Fathers Incorporated (FI), the agency I lead, and the countless nonprofit leaders who quietly wrestle with these dilemmas every single day.

FI is a federal grantee, and in just a couple of weeks, that grant may very well come to an end. For me, that reality is not an abstraction. It’s whether fathers who walk into our doors looking for support will find a place open to receive them. It’s whether we can pay our staff so they can feed their families while helping other families. 

Federal grants are not easy to pursue, and they are not easy to manage. They require not only expertise and persistence but a level of organizational capacity that many grassroots agencies — particularly those in Black communities — simply don’t have the privilege to build. The applications are complex, the oversight is constant, and the administrative burden is immense. 

Yet those federal dollars, when stewarded with clarity and intention, can be the lifeline that allows us to keep serving when crises like COVID-19 upend the nonprofit landscape. During the pandemic, that federal support was what gave us the strength to stay rooted in our mission — helping fathers and families — while the world was shifting around us.

Dunn is right about mission drift. Chasing dollars can leave an organization vulnerable. I have felt the pull of survival over purpose, and I’ve seen board members step away when the demands of navigating the federal space outpaced their comfort or knowledge. 

But I also know this: Scaling an organization to serve more people requires not just passion but infrastructure. I often remind myself that if my tree is going to grow tall, its roots must grow twice as deep. Federal funds have helped us deepen those roots in Metro Atlanta when families needed us most.

What Dunn’s article didn’t touch enough, in my view, is the uneven playing field of philanthropy. For organizations like ours — focused on fathers and men (many of whom are Black men) — private giving has never flowed as freely as it does for causes tied to women and children. Philanthropy, with some exceptions, has not shown the same compassion for fathers, even though the stability of men in families is inseparable from the well-being of women and children. 

So, while Dunn points to the crowd-out effect of government funding diminishing private donations, many of us never had that level of private support to begin with. Federal grants aren’t a decision to lean away from philanthropy; they’re a necessity to fill a void philanthropy has too often ignored.

None of this absolves us as nonprofit leaders from responsibility. It is our task to diversify, to innovate, to build multiple books of business — whether through earned revenue, corporate partnerships, or even for-profit entities that share our mission DNA. We must build organizations nimble enough to weather political winds yet firm enough in their values to resist mission drift. 

FI is charitable, yes, but it is not a charity in the old sense. We run with the rigor of a business because the communities we serve deserve nothing less.

Where I land is this: Reliance on federal funding cannot be absolute, but neither can avoidance. Government has an obligation to support agencies that stand in the gap, just as local and state systems do. But nonprofits, particularly those on the margins, must let neither government nor philanthropy dictate their survival. Our independence lies not in rejecting federal dollars altogether, but in designing organizations whose futures are not hostage to them.

Dunn’s piece made me pause, and for that, I am grateful. It confirmed what I’ve long believed: Our sector needs a more provocative, innovative approach to funding. Not one that romanticizes independence as purity, nor one that leans unquestioningly on federal funding, but one that builds resilience, honors mission, and creates space for nonprofits to keep their promises to the communities that trust them.

Accountability will always come with the money. The real question is whether we build organizations strong enough, deep enough, and clear enough in purpose to ensure that no funding source — federal, philanthropic, or private — ever becomes the author of our mission.