Everything is changing for Fort Worth nonprofits. We need your help | Opinion

I sat in a room recently with more than a dozen leaders of Fort Worth nonprofit groups, and I heard something I’ve rarely heard in my decades of social service work: uncertainty mixed with fierce determination. These aren’t people prone to panic. They are seasoned professionals who have weathered recessions, policy changes and countless crises. But this moment feels different.

At the “Reimagining Together” summit recently hosted by the University of Texas at Arlington’s School of Social Work, something remarkable happened. Instead of the typical doom and gloom that dominates conversations about funding these days, we asked ourselves: How do we move from reactive to proactive? How do we not just survive this moment but emerge stronger and more effective?

North Texas nonprofits lost $127 million in the first six months of 2025, most of it from federal sources we once considered stable and reliable. Organizations serving our most vulnerable neighbors are losing the funding they depend on to keep their doors open.

And the storm isn’t over. More cuts are coming.

It’s easy to think nonprofit funding is someone else’s problem. The truth is, when the nonprofit sector destabilizes, so does the community.

Who picks up the pieces when a single mother can’t afford child care and has to quit her job? When an elderly veteran can no longer get hot meals delivered and ends up in the emergency room as a result of malnutrition? When a teenager who relied on after-school programming for structure and mentorship has nowhere to go? When a family depending on food assistance has to turn to the food bank and there isn’t enough to go around?

Nonprofits are a vital part of Fort Worth’s economy. We employ thousands of people, deploy millions in resources and create stability in our community when everything else feels uncertain.

For decades, nonprofits operated within a relatively predictable ecosystem. Federal funding formed a stable foundation. Local foundations filled gaps. Individual donors supported missions they cared about. Agencies specialized in their lanes, and while we collaborated regularly, it was primarily to coordinate services. We largely operated independently.

That world is gone.

The role of government funding is changing fundamentally. Federal money that sustained programs for generations is disappearing or arriving with such unpredictability that long-term planning becomes impossible.

We must adapt. At the summit, we stopped thinking like individual agencies competing for scarce resources and started thinking like a unified sector working toward a common goal: maintaining Fort Worth’s quality of life for everyone.

The solutions that emerged were practical and actionable. We discussed creating shared back-office services, explored how artificial intelligence could help us work more efficiently and looked at expanding technology systems that allow coordination across agencies.

Most importantly, we recognized that we’re stronger together.

But we can’t do it alone. We need you.

We need business leaders to think beyond traditional corporate philanthropy. Your financial support matters enormously, but we also need your expertise and partnership. Those team-volunteer days in which employees paint walls or plant gardens are wonderful, but imagine what would happen if you deployed your professional expertise to strengthen nonprofit operations.

We need more community members to find organizations that align with their values and get involved. The more people invest in nonprofits doing good work, the better our community becomes for all of us.

Going forward, one path will lead to a slow erosion of the social safety net, where services disappear one by one until we wake up in a community we no longer recognize. The other path leads to nonprofits that are more efficient, more collaborative, more innovative and more connected to the entire community.

Local nonprofit leaders are on the second path, but we can’t walk it alone.

Fort Worth, we need you in this fight. Your nonprofit neighbors are working tirelessly to keep this community stable and thriving.

The question is, will you stand with us?

Carol Klocek is the CEO of the Center for Transforming Lives and has worked in Fort Worth’s nonprofit sector for more than 35 years.