Federal funding accounts for roughly half the budget for Cumberland-county based Through These Doors, which serves people affected by domestic violence. So when President Donald Trump issued the federal funding freeze at the end of January, co-executive director Rebecca Hobbs says the organization had to scramble to figure out how they were going to stay afloat.
"We expend the money to do the work that the federal government has in fact asked us to do, and then we get reimbursed after the fact," says Hobbs.
Trump's executive order to freeze all federal loans and grants has, for now, been halted by federal court, and one judge on Monday said the administration had violated his order to restore all payments.
Despite the reprieve, many nonprofits say the uncertainty surrounding future funding has left them in limbo and has put some programs in jeopardy.
Through These Doors was ultimately able to access funds after federal judges suspended the freeze. But this past weekend, Hobbs discovered another potential funding roadblock. She says solicitations for new grants and renewals on the federal Office on Violence Against Women website disappeared overnight.
"On the statewide level we have applications in for rural grants, and all of those monies go to people who are experiencing violence in Maine's rural communities," she says.
Other grants, says Hobbs, help older adults and disabled people who are experiencing abuse. Because these changes are happening suddenly and without warning, Hobbs says Through These Doors decided to hold off on hiring two staff positions. Long term, she says she's worried about domestic violence resources statewide because 85% of funding comes from Washington.
"At the risk of seeming overly dramatic, the risk is that domestic violence resources in this state will be gone," she says.
"We are definitely hearing about organizations that are pausing even the work that they, a month ago, were confident they had the funding for," says Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Maine Association of Nonprofits.
There are a few large nonprofits in Maine that may have enough reserves to ride out changes in federal funding, Hutchins says, but the vast majority are very small and operate on thin margins.
"Dealing with our most vulnerable citizens," she says. "So that might be delivering Meals on Wheels to our seniors who are isolated during the coldest months of the year, heating assistance to those folks, to families who might need some extra support for a variety of reasons."
And programs like Head Start, a child care program for low-income families. A community action agency that didn't want to be identified out of fear of retaliation says it had to use a line of credit to meet its Head Start payroll after the funding freeze. And there are fears that it won't be able to attract potential Head Start staff due to the lack of stable funding.
Other nonprofits reeling from attempts to slash funding include research organizations. On Friday, the National Institutes of Health announced it would cap grant payments for indirect costs at 15%, even for some current grants that have already been awarded.
"A lot of people don't understand what indirect costs means," says Dr. Elisabeth Marnik. She's the science outreach director for MDI Biological Laboratory, which is among several research institutions in the state that receive NIH funding, including Jackson Laboratory, the University of Maine, Maine Medical Center Research Institute and the University of New England.
Marnik says direct costs cover researcher salaries and supplies, while indirect costs cover things like buildings and electricity.
"Those two things aren't mutually exclusive," she says. "If you cut off indirect funding, we can't do the scientific research, because we wouldn't be able to pay for the equipment and the lights and the support staff to do that research."
Marnik says the loss of that funding could mean layoffs and some studies may have to be suspended. And that will have ripple effects beyond MDI Biological Laboratory, she says. The NIH website itself says that every $1 spent on research generates more than $2 in economic activity.
"So that's more of a doubling of our investment for NIH research," says Marnik. "So at the end of the day, not only are we going to hurt the ability to develop things for cancer or for aging or for Alzheimer's, but we're also going to harm the U.S. economy."
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey joined 21 other attorneys general on Monday to sue the Trump administration to try to block the policy.
And Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called it a "poorly conceived directive."
In a written statement, Collins says she expressed her opposition in a phone call to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is the nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Collins says RFK Jr. promised he will re-examine the initiative as soon as he's confirmed.
