April 2025
Trustees, Board Members and Program Officers,
As a group of non-profit colleagues in the food and farming space in California, we write to you
with gratitude for the financial, practical and moral support you continue to provide. Since
Trump’s inauguration, you have been asking how we are doing and how his executive orders
and subsequent unconstitutional actions have hurt our communities and our work. Thank you
for reaching out.
Like you, we are gravely concerned about the future of the non-profit community and civil
society. Non-profits are under significant scrutiny and attack. A recent Executive Order directs
Federal agency heads to stop funding non-profits that undermine “national interest” and the U.S.
House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would give the President unilateral
authority to strip non-profits of their tax exempt status if suspected of financing “terrorist
organizations.”
Our economy thrives because of non-profit organizations that provide critical services to feed
communities, and create the conditions for sustainable livelihoods by farmers, ranchers, and
farmworkers through resources, training, mentorship, and community building. We can no
longer count on the federal government to fund equity, food access, agricultural conservation,
organic agriculture, and climate justice to the degree needed. Their abdication of responsibility
comes at a time when our food system is under tremendous stress as our most vulnerable
communities struggle to get enough to eat, as farmworkers, farm owners and their families face
threats of unlawful deportation, as we lose farms to development pressure and consolidation,
and as climate disasters compound.
As hard as the past three months have been, there will be additional and different challenges
ahead, requiring us all to be nimble and responsive. In addition to the gutting and dismantling of
federal grant programs and agency personnel, we expect direct challenges to the non-profit
sector at a time when our services are needed more than ever. This assault is coming at a time
when many of us are still weary and still rebuilding from the pandemic, and when some of us
have been directly impacted by climate-induced natural disasters over the past few years.
The stakes are high and immediate. While it is impossible to get precise numbers, by our
estimate at the time of this writing, our organizations collectively are at risk of losing more than
$27.5 million in funding, 94 full-time equivalent staff or contractor positions, and $50.9 million in
financial support and contracts for farmers and ranchers. Some of us are making decisions right
now about staffing and shuttering or greatly reducing the scope of programs. We employ highly
experienced and talented food and agricultural professionals, and the loss of federal grants
impacts our ability to sustain these professionals. Some of us owe money to subcontractors that we cannot pay. Some of us need to tell farmers and ranchers right now what we will buy so they
know what to produce.
We need your help right away to backstop frozen funding, and at the same time we need you to
stay with us in the long game to keep building a strong and collaborative movement that
advances policy to shift our food and farming system towards justice, health and resilience.
Below are some ideas of how you can step up to help us stay afloat and prepare for the future.
Some of these actions can be taken independently and others might best be done in
coordination with other funders or via existing funder pools. We are already self-organizing to
share resources, and in most cases, it’s more useful to provide us with the financial support to
do what we need to do than to provide the service yourself.
Right Now:
- Give generously now. Disburse the grants you intend to make this year as soon as
possible. Make a generous unrestricted grant to all of your grantees to help with cash
flow and as a sign of solidarity. - Double down. If you have not increased your grant size each year to keep pace with
inflation, consider a one-time true-up grant adding 10% for every year since the most
recent grant increase. Give as much as you can leading up to the midterm election. - Help us be nimble. Convert any existing restricted grants to unrestricted.
- Reduce our administrative burden so we can focus on the crisis at hand. Consider
waiving any grant reports due in the next six months. Alternatives to grant reports could
include financial statements, a statement that we have complied with the terms of your
grant, or a one-paragraph summary of our progress. - Do not comply in advance. Write your grantees to reassure them that you don’t plan to
dramatically change your priorities, and that we can count on your continued support.
This is especially important for those of us who remain explicitly committed to social and
environmental justice (even if we have made the hard decision to change how we
publicly talk about our work). - Pay for legal counsel and risk assessment. Cover the cost of getting access to legal
counsel that assess risks with federal and state laws governing non-profit organizations
and compliance with federal contracts. Follow up with additional support to address any
issues.
In the Coming Months:
- Set up a “rapid response” legal fund. Some of us will likely find ourselves in the
crosshairs of legal challenges or frivolous IRS complaints challenging our non-pro
status. It is critical to begin preparing in advance for legal challenges. - Offer your grantees financial support and connect us with qualified trainers and
consultants who can provide us with expertise to address vulnerabilities such as:- Cybersecurity vulnerabilities and risk of electronic surveillance
- Systems to protect farmer and farmworker confidentiality, particularly for people
of color and the undocumented - Exposure of staff, donors, or partners to physical harm, online harassment and
public doxxing, and social isolation stemming from their public stance on
controversial issues or actions taken - Reputational attacks, hostile narratives and misinformation
- Mental health services for staff
- Educate yourselves about IRS compliance related to lobbying, and speak out about the negative repercussions of government action to your grantees and the populations your organization seeks to serve. Encourage us to do the same, and provide resources for those unfamiliar with their right to advocate.
- Support California government contracting reform efforts to streamline state-level contracting for food and agriculture programs (i.e., CalNonprofit’s Nonprofit Equity Initiative). These include instituting increased advanced payments, indirect cost coverage, greater flexibility and reduced reporting requirements.
In the Months & Years to Come:
- Greatly reduce or eliminate your requirements for detailed proposals and reports. We will have to do more with less, and the reduction of administrative burdens will help your dollars go further.
- Make more unrestricted funds and multi-year grants.
- Adopt a policy to increase your giving to each of your grantees by at least 10% annually just to keep pace with the cost of living and inflation. This will keep your relative grant impact the same size year over year.
- Give away more than the minimum required.
- Increase philanthropic impact with program related investments, or impact investments, when appropriate.
Finally, we invite you to join us in re-thinking how non-profit organizations and funders work together in the longer term. With your engagement, we believe this time of upheaval could catalyze new and more powerful ways to be in partnership.
Thank you for hearing our concerns and doing what you can to respond in practical ways.
Respectfully,
Allison Davis, Executive Director, Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network
Andrea Kelly, Executive Director, FoodLink for Tulare County
Andy Naja-Riese, Chief Executive Officer, Agricultural Institute of Marin
Anna Hopkins, Executive Director, Farm2People
Beth Smoker, Policy Director, California Food and Farming Network
Cathryn Couch, CEO, Ceres Community Project
David Mancera CEO, Founder/CEO, La Cultiva, a Tera Farm initiative
Christine E. Farren, Executive Director, Foodwise Community
Dave Henson, Executive Director, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Eli N. Bacon, Executive Director, Sierra Harvest
Elly Brown, Co-ED, San Diego Food System Alliance
Hernan Cavazos Garcia, President, Foodshed Cooperative
Jeneba Kilgore, Co-Director, Agroecology Commons
Jennifer Grissom, Executive Director, Food Access LA
Jo Ann Baumgartner, Executive Director, Wild Farm Alliance
Kelly Damewood, CEO, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF)
Kyle Tsukahira and Heng Lam Foong, Co-Directors, Asian Pacific Islander Forward Movement
Laura deTar, Executive Director, Fresh Approach
Martin Bourque, Executive Director, Ecology Center
Mary Kimball, CEO, Center for Land-Based Learning
Michael R. Dimock, Executive Director, Roots of Change
Michelle Hughes, Co-Executive Director, National Young Farmers Coalition
Minkah Taharkah, Coordinator, California Farmer Justice Collaborative
Nancy Vail, Executive Director, Pie Ranch
Leonard Diggs, Director of Farmer & Rancher Opportunities, Pie Ranch Cascade Regenerator
Patricia Carrillo, Executive Director, ALBA (Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association)
Paul Towers, Executive Director, Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF)
Pei-Yee Woo & Lauren Schneider, Co-Executive Directors, Kitchen Table Advisors
Rebecca Burgess, Executive Director, Fibershed
Reggie Knox, CEO, California FarmLink
Renata Brillinger, Executive Director, California Climate & Agriculture Network (CalCAN)
Shawn Gerth, Executive Director, Veggielution
Staff collective, Sustainable Economies Law Center
Steve Schwartz, Executive Director, Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative
Torri Estrada, Executive Director, Carbon Cycle Institute
