MCR hosted nonprofit leaders in May 2025 to discuss shared challenges in the wake of federal funding shifts and other threats presented by the new presidential administration.

Program director Matthew Schmitt reflects on current events and ways Michigan Community Resources is stepping up to support nonprofits in this challenging time in our latest blog post.

Connections, Then and Now

When schools, churches, businesses, and community centers were re-opening after the COVID-19 quarantine, Michigan Community Resources considered what that might mean for us.

After nearly two years of connecting through technology, we missed being in person. We were grateful to meet in person again with the people we served. Though technology had helped us to stay connected and continue to provide the legal support, capacity building, and resource navigation work we have been known for, we longed for connection that couldn't fully be replicated online.

In These Hard Times

In 2025, the necessity for connection with the resilient, brilliant, resourceful members of our community who hold us together in times of trial is more apparent than ever.

The impact of decisions made so far in 2025 by the federal government has hit our nonprofit community hard from every possible angle. This is especially true for those on the front lines providing direct services that have been dependent on government funding.

In an already insecure and competitive funding landscape, further restricting the resources available to organizations filling gaps in public services makes communities that rely on those crucial services even more vulnerable.

Challenges face philanthropy as well. Recent conversations between MCR and our funding partners have revealed that many foundations are guarding against an onslaught of attacks against their work. They are striving to ensure long-term grantee partners have some form of support as huge parts of their annual budgets are obliterated overnight with federal funding clawbacks.

That doesn't mean we are paralyzed as a sector.

We believe that intermediary nonprofits, those like MCR who exist to serve and support other nonprofits, are best situated to lead the increased scaffolding and care that will be necessary to sustain the sector in the next four years and beyond.

Intermediaries: Building and Leveraging Connections

Michigan Community Resources has always worked as the connective layer in the social impact ecosystem, a mycelial network between philanthropic foundations and grassroots organizations doing the daily work in communities.

In nature, mycelial networks are fungus and other living organisms underneath the forest floor. Organisms use these networks to communicate and send signals about disease or other threats. Mycelial networks are crucial for the health and stability of ecosystems, supporting plant growth, nutrient cycling, and even acting as a defense mechanism against pathogens.

ABOVE RIGHT: STOCK IMAGE

Much like networks in nature, intermediary nonprofits strengthen networks in communities, offering mechanisms for connection and communication in support of grassroots-level work. Our unique vantage point allows MCR and other intermediaries to be nimble, identifying sector-wide needs and responding to them, leveraging the power of our connections with both funders and nonprofits. 

Intermediaries: Leading the Charge

As a result, coordinating nimble responses to changing needs is part of the role of intermediaries.

When the 2008 housing crisis shook Detroit, MCR developed trainings, toolkits, and connections to other resources that strengthened community groups and nonprofit organizations, which enabled them to respond to the challenges they suddenly faced. MCR’s mini grant program was an early resource for this purpose in the city. Michigan Community Resources, then Community Legal Resources, prompted funders that it was important to fund block clubs—not just through capacity building, but also through targeted financial investment.

Alongside our intermediary partners, Michigan Community Resources has always maintained an understanding that our work was connected, and that by combining efforts, we could collaborate to create better infrastructure to support the nonprofit sector.

During the pandemic, MCR co-CEO Shamyle Dobbs joined together with a sisterhood of intermediary nonprofit executives, dubbed the Transforming Solidarity Collective.

This partnership explored how linking arms with colleagues at NEW (Nonprofit Enterprise at Work) Co.act Detroit, Community Development Advocates of Detroit, and Michigan Nonprofit Association, could provide support and solidarity to these leaders while coordinating advocacy to the philanthropic sector toward more resources for nonprofits and community organizations. 

Those relationships allowed MCR to develop the Dovetail nonprofit resource website, to lead the authorship of The Rest and Liberation Initiative Report, and to host subsequent conversations about how to support leaders with navigating and preventing burnout and developing long-term sustainability.

Our Call to Action

MCR keenly understands that current events present serious and troubling challenges for grassroots organizations. Recent federal funding cuts are already having dire and immediate consequences for real lives and will have negative implications for years to come.

Nonprofits are being forced to make difficult decisions, with layoffs, closures, and mergers already on the agendas of board meetings.

MCR is committed to supporting the nonprofit sector through this period of funding scarcity while continuing to work for a more equitable and resilient nonprofit sector for years to come. We know these challenges won’t end with a single administration. The health of our communities will require the constancy of a deeply rooted and nurtured collective effort shared by nonprofit leaders, intermediaries, funders, local businesses and community centers, and between neighbors from porches to sidewalks to bike lanes and streets. Intermediaries work daily from the reality that we are all in this together.

Our Response

MCR's deep and authentic connections have always been our greatest strength. As we explored in our 2024 Annual Report, the trust we have developed with our clients keeps us connected to what they need and supports us in building a response.

RIGHT: RASHARD DOBBINS AND ASHLEY JOHNSON DISCUSS "CONNECTIONS" IN MCR'S 2024 ANNUAL REPORT.

In the current context, we are continuing our practice of deep listening. Our data and operations team, led by director Amber Umscheid, has diligently reviewed the data gathered in our 2025 Needs Assessment and produced a 46-page report analyzing nonprofit needs present across the sector. The needs assessment survey, conducted in the final months of 2024 and early 2025, involved 104 surveys and 33 interviews which our team used to understand themes in strengths and challenges faced by nonprofits and to inform future MCR service offerings. 

Secondly, we are redefining our pro bono Legal Services for Nonprofits to serve clients in the specific context of urgent legal issues facing organizations in 2025. Our legal programs have been a unique and powerful service offering we’ve provided to the nonprofit sector at no cost to clients since our founding as Community Legal Resources in 1998. MCR's legal team has been sorting through the new threats and rapid challenges to laws impacting nonprofits, while at the same time organizing a new, streamlined intake method for client requests, and strengthening our network of pro bono attorneys ready to address essential legal needs.

Third, we are reinventing the spaces we have held for radical candor. Since 2023, we have hosted informal networking events to hold space for dialogue between clients, funders, intermediary partners, and social impact consultants. Through our work as grantee cohort facilitators and resource navigators—currently for for KIP:D+ and CDAD and formerly with the Pontiac Funders Collaborative, Co:act Detroit’s Activate Fund, and the Detroit Regional Chamber’s NeighborHUB—we continue to provide workshops to discrete audiences designed to meet specific and immediate needs.

To meet this moment, we are retooling these formats, evolving our programming to do more. Informed by patterns we see emerging from our 2025 Needs Assessment and other ongoing conversations, we will be providing highly organized engagement opportunities that allow organizations to come as they are, share knowledge and resources, and build infrastructure for mutual aid.

Pushing for Solidarity

Even with all this work in place, MCR will continue to push for more. Our partner intermediaries in the sector will continue to push for more.

When resources get tight, it is decisively time to build fresh new lines of solidarity—not just between nonprofits and philanthropy, but also between local businesses and community leaders, activists and organizers, artists and musicians, children and elders.

In MCR's position as an intermediary, we can help our clients build connections. Building solidarity is the tactic that intermediaries are best aligned to support.

And we at MCR believe we can help to build ever more humane and restorative systems in this process.

We stand now, as fearlessly as possible, proud of our communities and the work we have done, prepared and preparing for the days, weeks, and months ahead, and sincerely hoping you will join us.

Subscribe to MCR's newsletter for the latest updates on our programs to support nonprofits.

Matthew Schmitt is director of Resource Navigation at Michigan Community Resources.