The holiday season is typically the time of year when nonprofit organizations and charities see the biggest boost in donations — helped, in recent years, by the growing movement of ��the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, that encourages people to contribute to the causes that inspire them.

But like everything else this year, Giving Tuesday falls in the middle of a global pandemic, and nonprofits throughout Washington and the rest of the country are struggling to continue to deliver the necessary services while facing a loss of volunteers and of revenue.

A new from the at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, drawn from a survey of more than 200 nonprofits around the state, finds many nonprofits are struggling. Results of the survey, prompted by the researchers’ concern over how nonprofits are faring during the pandemic, are posted on the center’s .

“Overall, nonprofits report that funding is down 30%, and demand for services is up more than 10%,” said the center’s faculty director, , a professor in the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. “Health and human service organizations that are typically engaged in direct service report that demand for services is up 28%.”

That nonprofit organizations are having a difficult time may come as no surprise during the COVID-19 economy. Unemployment has remained high for most of 2020, businesses report plummeting revenue and many, amid quarantine restrictions that have been in place to varying degrees since March, have shut their doors permanently.

But the center’s study shows that the need for the services that nonprofits provide — from food banks to youth services to senior care to the arts — hasn’t gone away, and in many communities, has only increased.

“While many nonprofits have tried to rapidly adapt to new ways of delivering services, a lack of sustained, unrestricted funding jeopardizes their viability over the long term,” said co-author , a doctoral candidate in the Evans School.

The center’s study found that:

• Over the next year, nonprofits expect revenue is likely to continue to decline on average by 4.2% for health and human service organizations, and by 25.6% for other organizations.
• Volunteer ranks have dropped 30% to 50%, limiting organizations’ ability to operate at full capacity.
• Nearly two-thirds of organizations in the sample have had to put one or more programs on hold, while 14% have had to end at least one program.
• CARES Act funding is helping: More than half of nonprofits have received Paycheck Protection Program loans, but organizations say the uncertainties involved in the program underscore its temporary nature.
• Over 68% of nonprofits report actively prioritizing the communities at greatest risk for COVID-19 infection and its economic ramifications – including people with low incomes, people experiencing homelessness, and Black, Indigenous and people of color communities.

So how to plan for the future?

With vaccines not expected to be widely available for months, and warnings by public health officials that many of life’s routines won’t return to normal until well into 2021, the economy isn’t likely to take a dramatic upward turn right away. Foundations and corporations may be positioned to help, and many are already taking steps to loosen restrictions on existing grants. Still, 60.8% of nonprofits reported that increased funding from foundations will be key to weathering this period, researchers said.

Individual giving also plays an important role.

“Individual donors can support nonprofits and take advantage of the CARES Act’s $300 charitable deduction, which is only available in 2020,” Gugerty said.

The report also contains recommendations for governments and institutional funders, including increasing clarity and ease for nonprofits to apply for and pay back loans – or have them forgiven — and for more money to be directed toward organizations led by and serving Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

The study was funded by the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits & Philanthropy. Also contributing to the report were associate teaching professor and doctoral candidate , both of the Evans School.

For more information, contact Barnhart at enm@uw.edu��or Gugerty at ���ܲ�����ٲⰪ�ܷ�.����.��

Here’s a quick look at a few such UW-created podcasts, from benevolent marketing to Arctic geopolitics — and a classics professor’s work being featured in a podcast produced by the Times Literary Supplement.

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EarthLab / UW Tacoma
Hosted by , associate professor, UW Tacoma Nursing and Healthcare Leadership Program.

“What do people think about environmental challenges? And what do they do every day to survive those challenges? We explore these questions in this podcast series,” say co-principal investigators Evans-Agnew and , urban ecologist and assistant professor in UW Tacoma’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences.

Beginning in 2019 and continuing earlier this year, this team of UW Tacoma professors and students asked people in Tacoma and the South Sound to fill out postcards with their own answers to those questions.

“We stood in the street, behind booths, in the sunshine and the rain … We chose places where we wouldn’t necessarily find the sort of people who already had a voice,” the researchers wrote. The team gathered about 1,000 postcards in all, and those responses are the subject of the podcasts.

Each podcast presents selections from the postcards, and the researchers also discuss their experiences. One episode features UW Tacoma plastics researcher and geoscience lecturer .

Evans-Agnew said the team plans a second series of the podcast that will focus on COVID-19, environment justice and police oppression issues.

“I also do not want to lose sight of the continued — and quiet roll-backs of environmental policy that are occurring in the shadows of this unrest,” Evans-Agnes said. “It is the untold story of this time.”

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“”
Written and hosted by , senior lecturer, UW Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences.

“This podcast explores the emotional burden of climate change,” writes Atkinson, “and why despair leaves so many people unable to respond to our existential threat.”

The fourth episode, “Coping with Climate Despair in Four Steps,” outlines strategies to “beat the climate blues and become an agent of change.” Atkinson’s research focus is the environmental humanities and her teaching explores intersections between environmental studies and American culture and literature.

Atkinson added: “Meanwhile, frontline communities — particularly people of color, indigenous communities, and other historically-marginalized groups — are experiencing the heaviest mental health impacts of climate disruption and displacement. This series introduces ways to move from despair to action by addressing the psychological roots of our unprecedented ecological loss.”

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Hosted and produced by the Canadian Studies Center,
Jackson School of International Studies.

The inaugural 45-minute episode of this occasional podcast series features political science doctoral student

interviewing , former two-term premier of the Yukon Territory and the Jackson School’s 2013-14 Fulbright Canada Chair in Arctic studies.

The interview focuses on Penikett’s 2018 book “.” Publisher’s notes say the book explores the nature of a new “Northern consciousness” or “Arctic identity” beyond pop culture stereotypes that “fail to capture northern realities.”

Ahlness is a 2020-2021 Foreign Language and Area Studies fellow in Inuktitut with the Canadian Studies Center, which produces the podcast with the Jackson School’s International Policy Institute and Center for Global Studies.

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“”
Hosted by , senior lecturer in the and co-director of the .

“Marketing can be a force for good,” says Mills Barnhart, but it can also be “complicated, confusing and downright nerve-wracking.” Her podcast seeks to bring clarity to marketing chaos. “I talk about how you can think about marketing differently so you can do marketing differently with less stress and more joy.”

Mills Barnhart has produced the podcast weekly since April, with 1,500 downloads so far. Most episodes are a half-hour to an hour in length and have featured interviews with the UW’s of the Department of Communication and of the Evans School.

“Whether you work for a for-profit corporation or a nonprofit organization,” Mills Barnhart writes, “if you’re out to make the world a better place, this podcast will give you the insight and inspiration you need to market your mission with clarity and confidence.”

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Times Literary Supplement podcast discusses book by UW classics professor Sarah Levin-Richardson

A book by , UW professor of classics, was the subject of a recent podcast by the Times Literary Supplement, a publication of the Sunday Times of London. The book is “,” published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.

The podcast series is called “Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon” and the episode about Levin-Richardson’s book, featuring Rebecca Langlands of the University of Exeter is “.” Langlands also published a of the book.

Read more on the Department of Classics’ , and listen to the podcast either or downloadable from .