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Federal cuts have ripple effect across Northfield, Rice County nonprofits
By Colton Kemp, Northfield News
Apr 28, 2025
Nonprofits across the community are losing funding, as President Donald Trump’s administration prioritizes savings in federal spending, and the collaborative nature of the nonprofit network in Rice County means funding cuts can have a ripple effect on other nonprofit work.
For example, HealthFinders Executive Director Charlie Mandile said his organization experienced a blow to its funding in late March, after he received an email stating a $200,000 grant for substance-abuse prevention was terminated.
Community Action Center Senior Director Anika Rychner said the cuts are impacting “not just the CAC, but all of our local partners.”
The email to Mandile came on a Friday and said the grant-funded work needed to stop effective Tuesday — three days prior.
“Obviously, this was quite an immediate bind that we really didn’t have any kind of precedent for,” he said.
He said the HealthFinders team had to reshuffle several programs and revenue streams as a result of the funding loss. Some staff at HealthFinders had their hours cut, and one employee had to be laid off.
“We put [mitigating harm] as our top priority,” Mandile said. “We, as we have always done in moments of growth or change — in this case, reductions — we put everything on the table. We looked at the resources that we do have and that are intact, and reorganized them to ensure that we could maintain continuity of care and not abandon the vulnerable youth that we had been serving.”
HealthFinders was also sending staff to The Key in Northfield, where they conducted meetings around substance-abuse prevention. They had to stop sending staff for those meetings, demonstrating the ripple effect cuts for one organization can have on others in the community.
“In the first quarter of 2025, 176 young people came through the doors of The Key — 45 of them for the very first time,” said The Key Executive Director Kelli Podracky. “The need is growing, and it’s not always just about after-school snacks or a game of pool. Many youth are seeking support, a place to belong, mental health resources, safe shelter or help with substance use. Losing federal funding at a time of increased need, especially in these critical areas, is devastating.”
Mandile explained the reason for the staff not being able to still go to The Key.
“Backing away from The Key was essentially a byproduct of us scrambling to not leave the school-based youth, who are in the process of prevention and/or recovery from substance use, without care from one day to the next,” Mandile said. “So these are vulnerable youth who are at risk of or are actively using substances. For us, to stop work immediately was just not an option.”
Rychner noted that the CAC sources much of its food from Channel One Regional Food Bank, and many food shelves source from similar food banks.
“A lot of that has been cut now,” Rychner said. “We’re watching how that’s going to impact all food shelves across Minnesota and across the country. It could be up to about a quarter of the food that we bring into CAC and then distribute, so that’s pretty significant.”
Mutual strain
Rychner also said the collaborative nature of area nonprofits means when one is affected, they all are.
“If HealthFinders is losing funding because they’re losing behavioral health specialists, it will impact our participants who come to see us,” she added. “We’re all intertwined in our community.”
Mandile agreed the uncertainty is part of what makes it so challenging.
“One of the things we really tried to do was put this shock, which is what it was, as quickly behind us as we could,” he said. “That way, we could get back to focusing on the programs that we are delivering, which are significant and impactful. And so our team and our families and our communities wouldn’t feel a perpetual state of fear and uncertainty of services that they rely on suddenly disappearing overnight.”
In the weeks that followed, he said HealthFinders worked quickly to make necessary changes and reassure those who depend on them.
“I think communicating to our staff, to our partners, to our community, to our patients, what has been a lot of the work over the last month is important,” he said before describing some of that work. “Really making quick organizational changes so that we could continue to do what we’re in a position to do, leveraging the relationships we have with our community, patients and partners, and to assure them that we are doing everything we can to stay strong and supportive of them in the moments when they need us most.”
Luckily for the youth who were in the HealthFinders-facilitated programs at The Key, Podracky said their team is also adapting.
“Thankfully, our staff member Adam Wille, a certified peer recovery specialist, has stepped up to lead a new weekly group. Nonprofits are being forced to pivot — robbing Peter to pay Paul — but we will rise to meet the need,” she said.
Rychner compared the current moment to another fairly recent time of unprecedented challenges.
“This is a little bit like leading through the pandemic, where we actually have never done this, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “But we want to be in solidarity together. We want to trust that this community can come together and work together.”
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