This weekend marks one year since the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, one of the largest and most sweeping legislative and spending packages in our country’s history. Appropriately, the Rescue Plan made nonprofit corporations eligible for an unprecedented amount of funding, including grants to help pay for the vital relief and recovery support they provide and, to a lesser extent, direct financial assistance to help them recover from the pandemic. 

Accessing this funding, however, is proving quite challenging for many. Between a lack of organizational capacity – limited access to skilled grants professionals, overextended staffs, and too little cash or credit to wait for grant reimbursement payments – and the dizzying complexity of program administration (particularly at the local and state government levels, which likewise  lack capacity), some nonprofits are finding themselves left out in the cold. 

Meanwhile, others are receiving more government grant funding than ever before and now face the difficult tasks of rapidly scaling programs (during widespread staffing shortages) and keeping up with compliance and reporting requirements. Some of these challenges were unavoidable given the extraordinary circumstances of a pandemic and emergency aid, but others, frustratingly, are the result of more than a decade of systemic underinvestment and neglect of Nevada’s federal grants infrastructure. 

Nevada’s nonprofits and public entities (local governments, state agencies, school districts, etc.) have long struggled to secure and fully implement federal grant programs. In fact, Nevadans are shortchanged an estimated half a billion dollars per year that could be invested in a range of programs, from the arts and affordable housing to education and workforce development, and the state ranks 45^th nationally in federal grant funding per capita. When asked, grants professionals consistently report organizational incapacity, antiquated processes, and too little collaboration and support as the chief causes of our underperformance. These challenges have been hindering Nevada for more than a decade. We should solve them now before they undermine the next decade, too.   

The broad inclusion of nonprofits in the Rescue Plan, and reinforced in subsequent regulatory guidance from the U.S. Treasury, underscores the extraordinary role they play in America as well as the substantial economic harm they experienced as a result of the pandemic. Nevada’s local governments and state agencies, which will receive more than $5 billion in flexible funding from the Rescue Plan and CARES Act and have tremendous discretion in deciding how to spend it, should do everything necessary to extend the Rescue Plan’s lifeline to the nonprofits that we are all counting on. 

For example, providing grants to build organizational capacity and address pandemic-related deficits, in addition to funding programs. Moreover, we need to finally fix the inefficient administrative and budgetary processes that have long stymied the return of federal resources to Nevada taxpayers and their communities. 

Let’s start by celebrating several recent major accomplishments in these regards, including the largest regional collaboration ever to apply for federal funding, City of Las Vegas’ slate of nonprofit grant awards, Clark County’s creation of a Recovery Office, and Nevada’s Home Means Nevada Initiative. Then let’s move fast to fully implement Assembly Bill 445, the comprehensive federal grants reform measure passed last legislative session on a bipartisan basis, and finally address the very long list of barriers that keep Nevadans from getting their fair share.

Working together and smarter, we must  craft and implement a strategic vision for how federal grants can help build a stronger, more inclusive, and resilient Nevada for generations (and crises) to come. 

Miles Dickson is a third-generation Nevadan and president of Nevada GrantLab, a nonprofit corporation he founded in 2020 that supports fellow nonprofit organizations and their government partners to access and administer federal grants. Prior to that, he spent nearly a decade in management consulting, supporting government and nonprofit organizations. He also served as chief of staff to state Treasurer Zach Conine. Miles has a J.D. from the Boyd School of Law and B.A. in journalism from UNLV, and is a graduate of UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Executive Program.