Oregon Nonprofit Modernization Act
As of 2020, there are 1.54 million nonprofits, accounting for 10 percent of the nation’s workforce and more than 12.5 million employees, the third largest workforce of any US industry. Most of these are relatively small organizations. More than 66 percent have annual budgets of less than five hundred thousand dollars.
- Kelly E. Griffin, Solve, Not Serve: What Other Nonprofit Management Books Won’t Tell You
We, along with many of our Community Partners, recently endorsed Senate Bill 606: Oregon Nonprofit Modernization Act. If passed, it will help Oregon’s nonprofits retain staff and continue providing essential services that promote the well-being of our state’s children and families. Community members, particularly those living in poverty or confronting systemic racism, trust local nonprofits, which position them to best meet community needs.
Unfortunately, nonprofits currently face a daunting barrier to fulfilling their important roles. They cannot exist without their employees, and nonprofit employees have an incredibly high rate of burnout and turnover. According to the Nonprofit Association of Oregon’s Compensation and Benefits Report, in 2020, the average turnover rate for full-time staff was 19%, and the average turnover rate for part-time staff was 36%.
By passing the Oregon Nonprofit Modernization Act, Oregon’s legislators can help Oregon’s nonprofits retain staff and strengthen financial health, both of which are aligned with the capacity building support SVP offers. The Nonprofit Modernization Act includes:
Immediate changes to improve government contracting practices
The establishment of a Nonprofit Task Force to streamline and simplify state contracting, improve payment delivery, reduce burdensome reporting requirements, and raise nonprofit wages to improve employee retention
A Workforce Retention Fund to help nonprofits retain employees
As Carolina Castañeda del Río, Director of Community Impact, puts it, “A part of SVP Portland's commitment to anti-racism is leveraging our influence to dismantle systems that perpetuate inequitable results. Many nonprofits exist to address the most complex issues in our society, and yet they are particularly stretched in their resource capacity to build successful, sustainable, and effective organizations. This bill addresses common challenges, such as burdensome reporting, insufficient funding for overhead expenses and administrative functions, and unsustainable delays in payments from government contracts.”
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