For the dozens of nonprofits that help fill basic needs in greater Lansing and mid-Michigan, the big word in 2024 is “more.” More hunger and food insecurity, more demand for child care, more need for mental health services, and much, much more housing insecurity and homelessness.
“More” has no morals. It’s a cold brick of a word, with nothing to offer but dead weight.
The only thing to do is to put a bigger brick of “more” on the other side of the scale — more resources, more volunteers, more advocacy.
It’s a heavy lift, but there’s no better time to become involved in the crucial work of local nonprofits, large and small, donating, volunteering, advocating, helping helpers help.
Help has never been timelier. Besides more need, there is more uncertainty for local nonprofits. Looming on the horizon is the only word scarier than “more” — less. With pandemic-era relief funds tapped out, and a new federal administration on the horizon, nonprofits are likely to be tasked with doing more with fewer federal funds from departments like Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development — crucial resources that have long helped to sustain local programs for the hungry and homeless. Agencies are preparing for fewer and smaller grants, less help from tapped-out corporate donors and diminishing purchasing power from the money that does come in, owing to inflation.
As an antidote to dread and despair, nonprofit leaders are putting their faith in the generous greater Lansing community, and in each other.
“We’re prepared for there to be less grant funds available, especially from federal agencies,” Allen Neighborhood Center Director Joe Enerson said. “But at the same time, I think our neighbors recognize the need in the community. Typically, we see an uptick at the end of the year from people who want to help out however they can.”
Food on the move
The next time you see a green and white Greater Lansing Food Bank van or truck, honk and salute. It’s probably on its way to one of dozens of local food pantries in the area, a school, a church or even a house on your block, where someone is going through hard times or living with a disability.
Food insecurity is pervasive in mid-Michigan, from the cracked concrete of downtown Lansing to the surrounding heartlands, from pre-school to college campuses.
“Food insecurity is at the higher level now since the 2008 financial crisis — even worse than during the pandemic,” Food Bank director Michelle Lantz said.
Clare County, one of the seven counties served by the Food Bank, is the most food insecure in the state.
“It’s very rural, access to food is harder there, and there are not a lot of good paying jobs there,” Lantz said.
Cash donations make a big impact. The Food Bank can stretch a dollar a country mile, thanks to bulk purchasing power that enables it to buy food at wholesale or below.
“It’s unheard of, and ridiculous, but we can turn one dollar into three meals,” Lantz said. “I know people love to donate food, because it’s very visceral, but we can do much more with money than they could by purchasing food at a retail store.”
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The scale of the operation is impressive. Working from a spacious new warehouse at 5600 Food Court Drive in Bath Township, the Food Bank distributes about a million pounds of food every month to Ingham, Eaton, Clinton, Shiawassee, Gratiot, Isabella and Clare counties.
Inside the warehouse, volunteers are often seen assembling care kits with open-and-eat food, utensils and personal needs, produced at the warehouse and sent to organizations working with the homeless, including schools that have students who are homeless.
The Food Bank works with 140 local entities in all, including both of the area’s major hospital systems. They even go to college campuses.
“The cliché is the poor college student eating ramen noodles, but that’s real,” Lantz said. “There’s a lot of food insecurity on college campuses,” If people aren’t fed properly, they can’t learn.”
The nonprofit’s approach to food insecurity is different from when it started 40 years ago. Mass distribution to about 110 food pantries in the area is still a mainstay, but it’s not enough. Food insecurity is everywhere, and it’s often hidden.
“The barriers to food aren’t as crystal clear as they used to be,” Lantz said. “When we find a population that has a food insecurity rate, we try to figure out how to serve them best, where they are. If they don’t have transportation, or can’t get to a food pantry, how can we get food to them?”
The Food Bank has ramped up home deliveries for people who are housebound, or disabled, and other mobile services. Some volunteers even walk through neighborhoods with a wheeled cart, like an old-fashioned fruit vendor, in areas where many people don’t have cars or access to a food pantry.
“Rural, urban — it doesn’t matter,” Lantz said. “Food insecurity affects everyone.”
The Food Bank’s web site has detailed information for people who want to donate money or food, become a corporate sponsor, or conduct a food drive for their own company or organization.
One of the busiest local food pantries replenished each week by the Food Bank and other donors is at the Allen Neighborhood Center on the east side of town. The number of people who come to the center’s food pantry on Monday food distribution days has doubled in the past two years, director Enerson said.
Last year, emergency COVID-era increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits ended, reducing the average recipient’s allotment by $90 a month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“People had a lot more assistance available to them, but as those programs have ended, the need increased,” Enerson said.
As need increases for food-related services, the Allen Neighborhood Center has expanded its partnership with the Food Bank.
“We couldn’t have our weekly food distribution without the Food Bank,” Enerson said. “But we need more hands to aggregate the food from the Food Bank and distribute it.”
People interested in volunteering can check the nonprofit’s web site for more information.
Besides an uptick in people signing up for food assistance and seeking emergency assistance, the Allen Neighborhood Center has seen a major influx of people who need help with Medicaid enrollment. Other services, such as financial counseling and referrals for a variety of needs, are being stretched to the limit.
The center’s Neighbors in Need program is a donor pool that supports all of the center’s direct services, including its food pantry and outreach services. People can donate to Neighbors in Need via the center’s web site.
Home for good
Eric Hufnagel is not into drama. Teeth-gnashing doesn’t help when your job is to coordinate and support dozens of Michigan noprofits fighting the rising tide of housing insecurity and homelessness.
As the director of the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness, Hufnagel concentrates mainly on funding, logistics and communication. But every now and then, his steady, bureaucratic voice takes on a strained undertow, like that of a level-headed captain on a sinking ship.
“More people are falling into homelessness,” Hufnagel declared. “Even though more shelters are coming on line, we can’t adequately meet the need in most communities around the state and the shelters are full.”
After the COVID-era moratorium on evictions ended in 2022, evictions increased drastically, as expected, but that’s only part of the problem.
Hufnagel described the current housing market as “supply and demand on steroids.”
“I don’t care what anyone tells you,” Hufnagel said. “The cost of doing business hasn’t increased that dramatically. The landlords want to keep up with the market. They’re making a greater profit, and it creates a situation where people are unable to stay.”
Even people who are working or people with disabilities who have been granted a housing-choice voucher from the federal or state government can’t find housing they can afford.
Tenants with nowhere else to go might grit their teeth and swallow a $150 per month rate increase, but only for so long.
“And what do you know?” Hufnagel said. “After six months, it adds up to $900 more than last year, they’ve had to tap into their savings and they’re tenuously housed.”
He paused to take a breath. “Sorry if you’re hearing emotion in my voice.”
The Capital Area Housing Partnership is hammering away at housing insecurity on several fronts. The nonprofit builds, or finds, permanent supportive units for people who are experiencing homelessness or domestic violence and helps cash-strapped homeowners deal with long-delayed, crucial maintenance like roofs or electrical systems.
The most urgent demand for CAHP’s services is for more housing units, for sale and for rent, according to CAHP director Emma Henry.
“We know we need more units in the Lansing area,” Henry said. “We have tried to leverage more resources to make that happen, whether that is state, federal, local, private banks.”
With a background in construction as well as social work, Henry is well suited to the job. As a kid, she built bird cages, using nuts and bolts from a hardware store owned by her father.
“It’s great to see a person move into a home we designed on paper and built,” she said. “It changes the trajectory of a person’s life.”
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This year, Henry is seeing the realization of a dream build, significantly larger than a bird cage — the renovation of Lansing’s historic Walter French Academy into 76 apartments and a daycare center.
Tenants will begin moving in this month, and that opens up a unique, newly launched donor opportunity called “Home for Good at Walter French.”
Of the 76 apartments, 19 are permanent supportive units for the homeless, people experiencing domestic violence and special needs clients.
But the apartments are unfurnished, and that’s where the community can help.
“The people moving into the units may be coming in with the clothes on their back and a bag of belongings,” Henry said.
Thanks to $50,000 grant from the Lansing Regional Community Foundation, all the units have a bed, a couch, a chair, a lamp and a kitchen table. CAHP is asking the community for cash to provide the other essentials — sheets, pillows, silverware and other basic necessities.
Henry informally called the drive “adopt an apartment for the holidays.”
Although cash donations are preferred, some new items will be accepted, or used at other permanent supportive housing units across mid-Michigan.
“If someone has a table, or some nice chairs, we won’t say no, but we don’t want a used pillow,” Kuhn said.
(Go to the capitalareahousing.org and click “Home for Good,” or contact Jen Zatkin at (517) 575-7161 for more information.)
Punching above their weight
For people who want to help one or more of mid-Michigan’s many nonprofits, but don’t know where to start, the Capital Region Community Foundation is available to act as a kind of philanthropic stockbroker, investing donor funds where they are most needed.
The foundation also has updated information on small nonprofits in your area that need help.
Foundation president Laurie Baumer urges prospective donors and volunteers to consider one of the dozens of smaller organizations embedded in neighborhoods across the region.
“It can be tough for people to decide what to support,” Baumer said. “There are so many deserving nonprofits doing excellent work. We all know the big ones, and they do big work, but we hope people will consider the smaller ones, too.”
Some of these small nonprofits, like the Southside Lansing Ministries, Southside Community Kitchen and LMTS Community Outreach, provide a range of basic services. Child care is a crucial but often overlooked need filled by a range of nonprofits in the Lansing area, like Wacousta Cooperative, K’s Precious Care Learning Center and Fenner Nature Preschool Center.
“Many people don’t know there are small child-care centers that are nonprofit, and they need support,” Baumer said.
Other small nonprofits focus on specialized support services, like KCS Angels, a day respite program for adults with developmental challenges, and TWIGS, provider of housekeeping and other services for people in cancer treatment. Nonprofits working with homelessness include not only the well-known City Rescue Mission, but many smaller, street-based Lansing nonprofits like Cardboard Prophets and Homeless Angels.
Baumer also gave props to Judson Baptist Church’s Love Clothing Center, a 25-year-old nonprofit that has provided new clothing to tens of thousands of local children.
“These nonprofits are working hard, but they just don’t get the attention they need to get support,” Baumer said.
People who want to help, but don’t know where to start, can donate to the Community Foundation’s Community Needs Fund, a growing endowment that is distributed to dozens of worthy organizations each year.
“We can support the community’s greatest needs, whatever that is at the time, because it’s always changing,” Baumer said.
Unkindest cut of all
Rising costs have pushed every local nonprofit, no matter where its funding comes from, into making some painful choices in recent years.
Kristina Schmidgall, director of the Lansing Area AIDS Network, or LAAN, has that and much more to worry about, both in the short and long term.
“What a thousand dollars covered in client assistance just doesn’t go as far,” she said. “Rent is higher, groceries are higher, utilities are higher, liability insurance, even paper. We’re excited when funds aren’t cut, but it’s still not going as far, and where do you make that up? You don’t want to pull from client assistance.”
Schmidgall said LAAN can use help in any form — food donations, cash donations and volunteers. The nonprofit’s core services are medical case management, prevention (HIV testing, education and outreach) and mental health services.
Volunteers help provide some of LAAN’s services, with training if necessary, but light volunteering might involve helping at the food pantry, the front desk, helping distribute the newsletter, or helping with one-off events like the September AIDS walk or the occasional condom packing party.
Despite the spirit of collaboration and mutual support among non-profits in mid-Michigan, the sheer volume and variety of needs in every sector of the community challenges donor time and dollars.
“On the day LAAN had its AIDS walk in September, there were five other fundraisers for Lansing nonprofits that I was aware of,” Schmidgall said. “People are going to make choices, not just in their choice of agencies to support, but how to spend their time.”
In the next four years, prospective budget cutting at the federal level has the potential to affect many local nonprofits. The Food Bank receives major support from the U.S. Agriculture Department. Nonprofits working with housing insecurity rely on HUD funds.
LAAN receives major funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control (for its prevention program), from HUD (for housing services) and from the Health Resources and Services Administration (for medical case management and care services).
“If those funds are cut, how does that come down? What does that look like?” Schmidgall said.
For many of LAAN’s clients, the questions don’t stop there. Since the Nov. 5 election, a behavioral health assistance program recently added to the nonprofit’s portfolio of services has been flooded with inquiries. “People are concerned about themselves, their health care, their relationships, about being discriminated against,” Schmidgall said. “We think we have specific rights in place, like gay marriage and medical programs, but what if they get rolled back? As we’ve seen, that has happened, and there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t.”
As if that weren’t enough, for nonprofits like LAAN, a terrifying squall line is looming on the horizon. On Nov. 21, the U.S. House passed HR9495, a bill that would allow the treasury secretary to terminate the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations in “material support” of terrorists.
In September, a coalition of over 350 civil liberties, religious, reproductive health, immigrant rights, human rights, racial justice, LGBTQ+, environmental and educational organizations signed a letter urging the House not to pass the bill. In the letter, the coalition declared that the bill “grants the Secretary of the Treasury virtually unfettered discretion to designate a U.S. nonprofit as a ‘terrorist supporting organization.’”
Schmidgall fears that this power might be wielded to target groups like LAAN.
“What happens when you’re a legitimate group, but you’re not popular with the administration?” she said. “We’re working with people living with HIV, but also, very supportive of the wider queer community, the trans community, the gay community, and that might not be looked on so favorably in the future.”
The bill is unlikely to pass in the lame-duck Senate, but many nonprofit leaders fear it will be taken up again, in some form, in the next two years, with Republicans in control of both congressional chambers and the White House.
The bill is also on the radar screen of Kelley Kuhn, president and CEO of the Michigan Nonprofit Association.
“We’re not feeling that action in the Senate is going to be taken this year, in lame duck,” Kuhn said. “As we look to a new administration, there may be other things that are top priority, that this may not rise to the top.”
But Schmidgall isn’t sure that crouching under the couch and hoping the vacuum won’t reach that far will work.
“You think, ‘We’re just this small organization, little place in Lansing,’ but who knows?” Schmidgall said. “We just put something on our Instagram and Facebook about trans care and HIV care. What if someone says, ‘let’s find the queer organizations?’”
Advocacy and turkeys
There are a million ways to help nonprofits help people get back on their feet, get through their lives, get through the next day, get a house, a job, a meal, a pair of shoes.
“Volunteers are needed across the board for nonprofits,” Kuhn declared. “We have not seen volunteer numbers jump back up in the numbers we saw before the pandemic. We need to energize interest from new volunteers, and from people who are unaware of the benefits of volunteering, not only to the nonprofits, but as a strong builder of community.”
A recent campaign urging Congress not to pass HR9495, or a future version of the bill, demonstrates that donations and volunteering aren’t the only ways to help.
Besides material help and volunteering, advocacy is crucial to preserving the health and effectiveness of local non-profits.
Statewide organizations like the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness can be an effective entry point. Director Hufnagel urged people to educate themselves on the web of factors that contribute to housing insecurity and homelessness, and become an advocate at multiple levels — with friends and family, at work or with local government.
At the coalition’s legislative action committee’s November meeting, more than 140 participants were briefed on budget changes, regulatory issues and proposed legislation at the state and federal level and informed on how to advocate for nonprofits serving the homeless with state and local officials.
The meetings are on the first Monday of each month and are open to the public.
“If people take a little time, and then make a five-minute phone call with the information provided, it’s not a huge commitment, but a very meaningful way people can flex their muscle,” Hufnagel said. “Elected officials care about what happens in their district. Staff is keeping track of who is calling on this or that issue, and increasing that volume of messaging can make a difference.”
Maybe a legislative committee meeting isn’t your style. How about dancing around in a parking lot with a frozen turkey?
At the Nov. 23 turkey giveaway sponsored by the LMTS Community Center on Lansing’s south side, more than 700 turkeys, with all the trimmings, were plunked into the trunks of visiting cars.
LMTS director Joshua Gillespie was all over the lot, exhorting, exulting and rallying dozens of chilly volunteers.
“I wish we could give out more,” Gillespie said. “The need is great.”
Working with the Greater Lansing Food Bank, LMTS serves more than 8,000 people a month with a food pantry, Fresh Food Friday and DoorDash deliveries, up from 4,000 people a month last year.
Gillespie welcomes cash donations and hopes to add a new freezer next year, but people are clearly the key to this operation. All afternoon, dozens of volunteers wrangled heavy pallets laden with turkeys and trimmings, hugging, dancing, singing and passing the turkeys from hand to hand like NFL running backs.
“We love volunteers who come with joy and happiness,” Gillespie said.
Fortunately, those are contagious conditions. That is the blessing behind the formidable challenges faced by nonprofits in 2024 and beyond. It feels great to give. The needs, and the benefits, are mutual.
“Nonprofits need access to people,” Kuhn said. “They need human capital. And for the volunteer, there’s no better way to connect with others, and with the community, than in a nonprofit.”
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