If your grant income feels less reliable than it did two years ago, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone. Here is what the numbers say, and what is worth your time this quarter.
What actually happened
A third of nonprofits reported some kind of government funding disruption in early 2025. One in five lost funding outright. More than one in four saw payments delayed, paused or frozen (Urban Institute, published October 2025, from a national survey of 501(c)(3) public charities).
The exposure underneath that is large. More than 80,000 nonprofits reported government grants each year from 2021 to 2023, worth at least $240 billion a year. In 2023, 86% of them would have run a deficit without that money (Urban Institute, March 2026).
Foundation money has not filled the gap. In a 2026 survey of nonprofit leaders, 57% said foundation grants had become harder to secure since January 2025, and 44% reported reduced foundation funding. Meanwhile 73% reported more demand for their services, and 39% ran an operating deficit, up from 22% in 2022 (Center for Effective Philanthropy, May 2026).
What that means if you are small
More demand, less certain money, and the same number of hours. That is the squeeze, and no grant strategy makes it disappear.
What it does change is where your effort goes. When money was steadier, chasing one more grant was usually the best use of a free afternoon. When it is not, the better use is often making the money you already have safer.
Four things worth doing this quarter
1. Know your concentration
Work out what share of your budget comes from your largest single funder. If one funder is more than a third of your income, that is your real risk, not the grant you did not apply for.
2. Get your reporting ahead of schedule
Late reports are the cheapest way to lose a renewal. If your reports are built from numbers you already track, they take an hour. If they are rebuilt from scratch each time, they take a week and they slip.
3. Ask your current funders first
A renewal is worth several applications. Program officers generally know before you do when something is changing. Ask them directly what they expect for next year.
4. Write down what a 20% cut would mean
Not a full scenario plan. One page: what you would stop, what you would protect, and who decides. Doing that calmly in September is very different from doing it in a panic in February.
What we are not going to tell you
You will see claims that applications per grant have doubled, or that success rates have halved. We looked for a credible, dated source for numbers like that and could not find one. What exists is vendor marketing, and we are not going to repeat it back to you as fact.
What the research does support is simpler: demand is up, government money got less certain, and foundation money got harder to reach. That is enough to plan around.