By Richard Sullins | richard@rantnc.com

For the first time in years, nonprofits in Lee County who have the proper approvals will now be able to apply for funding to be awarded by the county commission, to be effective when the budget for the next fiscal year takes effect on July 1.

It’s a change that has been discussed informally among Lee County commissioners for the last several months, but it became the topic of an official discussion held by the board in December.

There was no opposition to the change in the board’s policy and it drew bipartisan support. Leading the effort to broaden access to county funding was Democratic Commissioner Mark Lovick and Republican Commissioner Bill Carver, who decided not to seek another term in 2024.

Both Lovick and Carver expressed their desire to open up the process of awarding county funding so commissioners could hear new ideas, as well as new challenges that need to be addressed.

The issue was raised during the commissioners’ annual planning retreat held just before the holidays on December 14 and 15. While there was no formal vote taken, there was a clear consensus that it was time to change a practice commissioners set up several years ago for considering funding requests from local nonprofits.

Because the number of nonprofits seeking county funding was getting larger with each passing year, the commissioners felt forced about three years ago to put a cap on the total amount of money they felt could be awarded in a given year. In Fiscal Year 2023-24, the cap was set at $65,000.

But there was more.

They also voted to further restrict funding by making allocations available only to those who had received funding from the county before. The combination of those two actions effectively put a freeze on county nonprofit funding, meaning the same organizations were essentially guaranteed funding without having to compete against any new nonprofits.

But circumstances have been changing over the last year, especially after the commissioners began taking heat over that process following a debacle that started just before the Thanksgiving holiday in 2022.

In November of that year, the commissioners allocated $500,000 in federal COVID relief dollars to Life Springs Church’s Dream Center project, ignoring the recommendation of then-County Manager Dr. John Crumpton to slow down and study the matter for a month before taking a final vote.

They didn’t. Only Democratic Commissioner Robert Reives Sr. initially opposed making the grant. And it didn’t take long for everything to unravel.

Nonprofit groups across the county objected. Some of them provided the same sort of mental health and substance abuse counseling the Dream Center had proposed to offer, but they, along with a broader group of nonprofits that provide other services, claimed the county had awarded Life Springs $500,000 without advertising that funding was available and felt the chance to compete for that money on a level playing field had been denied to them.

To make matters worse, two of the seven county commissioners were members of the Life Springs Church that would have received the funds and failed to disclose that information before the vote was taken. The county discovered several weeks later that the Dream Center didn’t have the required tax-exempt status from the IRS to receive contributions. It apparently had not asked the church to provide that documentation at the time it submitted its proposal.

The last straw came in January of 2023 when it came to light that the minister picked to run the Dream Center had pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud in federal court in Pennsylvania fifteen months previously and had been ordered to pay back nearly $200,000.

The Dream Center ultimately did not receive the $500,000 in funding from the county.

Changes for the better

It wasn’t discussed during the December retreat, but it was the Dream Center that led the commissioners to look closely at the way they had been distributing funds to nonprofits each year. They also heard the message that new organizations were not being heard, and that issues that have arisen within the community in recent years might be going unnoticed by those who hold the checkbook.

And with the revaluation of property that took place in early 2023, the county had about $15 million more in funding from which to allocate to county needs where dollars previously had been tight.

The change in direction by the commissioners is important for all these reasons, and the guidance they gave to County Manager Lisa Minter and her staff in December seem designed to ensure that nonprofit organizations across the county, regardless of their size or age, will get a fairer shake when they make their case this spring, and in future budget years, for funding.

The commissioners gave direction to Minter to require those nonprofits who apply for county funding in years to come to provide evidence that they have adequate bonding coverage, as well as a copy of their IRS determination letter that qualifies them as a 501c3 tax-exempt organization.

They also empowered the county manager to recommend a total amount each year from which local nonprofits will receive funding, as well as creating a listing of those organizations recommended for funding and presenting that list to the commissioners when budget season begins.