Advocacy

County Executive Marc Elrich’s FY23 budget contains unprecedented support for the County’s nonprofit organizations. The budget includes a 6% inflationary increase in nonprofit contracts in all departments, including Community Grants. This is the first time an inflationary increase has extended to all nonprofit contracts, and is by far the largest increase in memory.

Other items of note in the County Executive’s recommended budget:

• $2.3 million in 46 programs shifted from Community Grants to base budget contracts.
• $8.3 million in Community Grants awarded.
• $2 million in new grant programs to be administered by the Office of Grants Management in FY23.
• $3 million in Cost Sharing Capital Grants

The budget also includes the new Office of Grants Management to oversee Community Grants, and an Office of Food Resiliency.

Recently Franca Brilliant, Nonprofit Montgomery’s Advocacy & Development Director, submitted testimony in support of Senate Bill 632: Maryland Health Benefit Exchange-Small Business and Nonprofit Health Insurance Subsidies Program. If passed, this bill would support nonprofits as well as small businesses and their employees, and will improve health equity in Maryland.

Nonprofit Montgomery is hard at work with our advocacy initiatives. Along with our Advocacy Committee, we are keeping track of what’s happening in the state legislative session. We testified on behalf of increasing funding to NIMBL, the short term no interest loan fund for nonprofits, and will be providing written testimony on other bills mentioned below.

We encourage our members to: take a position on these bills by reading up on these issues. You can also follow us on Twitter and reach out to us. See below for updates on General Assembly bills as well as other advocacy actions and resources.

Click here to read out full advocacy update email.

The “Time to Care Act” establishes a Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) program through which employees may take up to 12 weeks of paid leave from their jobs to care for new children, other family members with serious health conditions or disabilities, or themselves. Click here to see MD Center for Economic Policy’s business impact one-pager. For more information and to learn more, please visit timetocare.net.

Pandemic Impact on Nonprofits in Maryland
MD Nonprofits’ final COVID-19 and Racial Equity Survey is now available. Nonprofit Montgomery partnered with MD Nonprofits to collect this data in 2020, and Montgomery County tied with Baltimore for the county with the highest number of respondents. The data highlights the impact of covid on the nonprofit sector and the disproportionate impact on smaller nonprofits and nonprofits led by people of color.

Sign on to Letter to Governor Hogan
MD Nonprofits is calling on the state to devote at least $1 billion of the $4 billion projected budget state surplus to services for families and communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic effects. That sign-on letter is here. Nonprofit Montgomery has signed on, as have over 215 other organizations. We encourage all Maryland nonprofits to sign on to the letter.

Nonprofit ERTC Relief
The National Council of Nonprofits is leading the action to Restore the ERTC, which was eliminated for the fourth quarter of 2021, and is helping nonprofits that reduced their payments to the IRS in anticipation of these credits avoid having to pay back amounts owed due to the repeal. Click here for more information and  to learn how to get involved. If you were directly affected by the repeal, please reach out to Henry Bogdan, Maryland Nonprofits, who is collecting this information for an advocacy effort.