County to look at nonprofits
By Steve Herring
Published in News on January 11, 2015 1:50 AM
MOUNT OLIVE -- Nonprofit organizations can expect a hard sell this year when they face Wayne County commissioners to seek county funding.
If the nonprofit requests more than $5,000, its officers can expect to be asked for the organization's financial records to substantiate that the group is working to solicit funds from the private sector as well. And the organizations might stand a better chance of being funded if their mission complements county programs.
County funding of nonprofits has been a sticking point for Wayne County Commissioner Joe Daughtery since his election in 2012.
Thursday morning during the board's planning retreat at Steele Memorial Library, he suggested it is time for the county to develop a policy to deal with the issue.
Commissioners in other areas face the same problems as Wayne County when it comes to nonprofits, Daughtery said.
"Nonprofits are valuable," he said. "Literacy Connections is extremely valuable. I was never able to get that out. It is, and I support Literacy Connections. What I don't support is a good-meaning nonprofit now not required to go out and raise those dollars like they were. All they have to do is just come to the county commissioners and say, 'Hey, rather than me raising these dollars, and working to raise them from private, I am just going to the county and say write me a check for $100,000.'
"If we do it this year, then next year it is going to be $120,000. So all of a sudden there is not the driver motivation to go to the private sector and get those dollars. I want us to develop a fair way of determining of how in fact we are going to handle nonprofits. I think Brunswick County, one of the counties on the coast, just developed one."
Daughtery told County Manager George Wood he would like him to look into such a policy.
"I no longer want any commissioner to have to be faced with the fact of having to pick on a nonprofit and say, 'We are not going to fund you,'" he said. "Really and truly it needs to be addressed to be fair to the nonprofits as well as to the taxpayer."
The state legislature has addressed some of those concerns involving nonprofits receiving governmental funds, Assistant County Manager Tommy Burns said.
Burns said Harnett County, where he had previously worked, had faced the same problems as Wayne County.
Harnett County compiled a list of nonprofits that would ask for funds each year, he said. A letter, with a copy of the state law attached to it, was sent to each of those nonprofits, he said.
"The statute essentially was that any nonprofit that asked for $5,000 or more in governmental funds had to supply their requisite financials so that you could see if they were soliciting outside donations, and what their financial picture was," Burns said. "That has been on the books for about a year and a half now.
"That puts the onus on the nonprofit to show that there is an effort."
If the board is not careful those donations "bleed off" resources needed elsewhere, Wood said.
"I went to a city in Tennessee (as manager)," he said. "They didn't have enough money in the budget to replace police cars every year, and they were giving away $300,000 to nonprofits.
"There is something wrong with your priorities doing that. I had to point out to the board, of course United Way didn't particularly care for me, I had to point out to the board, 'You have a legal obligation to fund the police department. You have no legal obligation to fund these people (nonprofits). If the city is in this bad of shape, we need to do something about it.'"
What the city was doing was to spread the nonprofit funding throughout the budget instead of placing them all together on one sheet, Wood said.
He said he told the city board he wanted those pulled out and placed in one section.
"So what I did, I put a spotlight on (nonprofits)," he said. "It was intentional. Then we reviewed the whole process and went through the list. There was a gnashing of teeth.
"The bottom line was they didn't change a whole lot. So I guess the moral of that story is that ultimately it does come down to the board holding the line on these things because as times get increasingly tougher, and the private sector can't support these things, that is what happens. They come to you."
The requests are always incremental as well, he said.
"One of the best things that I would recommend is if you get requests mid-year, don't do it," Wood said. "Say, 'We have a budget process and your request needs to be compared to every other request we get, not just from nonprofits, but from our own operations.'"
It is easy to forget that during the budget process that amounts are cut, he said.
Then the nonprofits come in at midyear and ask if the county would consider "this or that," Wood said.
"That is how it happens," he said.
Daughtery said he would like the nonprofit's mission to be tied to services that the county is providing.
There are some the county ought to support because they are "critical" to the county's mission, Wood said.
"If they weren't doing that, then we probably would have to," he said.
Daughtery asked Wood to devise a nonprofit funding policy so that going forward the board and nonprofits would be aware of it.
"We have to remember something here," he said. "We are taking money from taxpayers and we are determining where those dollars are going in regards to nonprofits. I have a problem with that."
If taxpayers want to contribute to a nonprofit, that is what they should be doing instead of the county making that decision for them, he said.
Wood said he would prepare a list of nonprofits and how much money they receive from the county.