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Needs rising as nonprofit resources shrink
By Colton Kemp, Northfield News
Apr 29, 2025
Funding for nonprofits and charities across the nation and in the local community continues to decrease, but the number of people relying on those nonprofits to meet their basic needs continues to increase.
Community Action Center Senior Director Anika Rychner gave an hour-long presentation to the League of Women Voters of Northfield and Cannon Falls Thursday evening at First United Church of Christ in Northfield, during which she spoke about the food shelves’ ever-growing clientele.
Toward the start of her presentation, she explained the concept behind the United Way’s ALICE report, which is a report on tracking the households in a community that are considered Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed.
The ALICE report came out in Minnesota last year, and demonstrates a wide gap between the federal poverty level and the annual household income needed to survive in Minnesotan communities. The county-level data from the 2010-2022 American Community Survey also shows that gap includes an increasing number of Rice County households.
The ALICE threshold is calculated by adding up the cost of everything from groceries and transportation to health care and housing for a given community, while the poverty rate is calculated using data on a selection of consumer prices in about a dozen metropolitan areas across the nation.
The report says, in 2022, Rice County had 23,616 total households. While 14% have an income at or below the federal poverty rate, the number of Rice County households at or below the ALICE threshold is almost twice that number.
“These are healthcare providers, paraprofessionals, grocery-store workers, so they’re the people that, during the pandemic, we called our heroes,” Rychner said. “But where do they get their needs met? How are our local heroes getting their needs met?”
She showed a graphic that revealed the number at or below the ALICE threshold has gone from 6,854 households in 2010 to 9,821 in 2022. That’s a 43% increase in just 12 years.
“Families are just not able to make quite enough to make ends meet, and rely on safety-net resources,” she added. “This is from 2022, so it’s already outdated. It came out in ‘24, but the study was done in ‘22.”
A family of four bringing in more than $27,000 a year was above the federal poverty line for 2022. But that same family needed $97,000 to be above the ALICE threshold, which she said still undervalues the cost of renting and child care.
HealthFinders Collaborative Executive Director Charlie Mandile also attested to not only the increased need in recent decades for everyone impacted by addiction, but agreed the programs have provably helped people.
HealthFinders facilitates training to use naloxone, which stops the effects of an opioid overdose. It also gives out fentanyl test strips, which can be used to determine if a substance is laced with fentanyl.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 24% decrease in overdose deaths from October 2023 to September 2024, and cited programs like those provided by HealthFinders.
“The prevention and the awareness that’s happening is for folks who are using, for folks who are at risk of using, or for family members and communities who are one degree away from folks who are using substances,” he said. “So this entire community approach was very much effective at reducing overdose deaths. At the same time, there still is significant drug use happening in our communities that we see every day at our clinics.”
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