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The DOJ under Attorney General Pam Bondi declined over 23,000 criminal cases in 2025, marking a historic shift in enforcement priorities toward immigration and away from fraud, drugs, and national security.
Collage by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: Jose A. Bernat Bacete, Pictac and skaman306/ Getty Images.
Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration
Apr 10, 2026
In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.
The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.
In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.
The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrations that believed a federal crime may have been committed. The DOJ routinely declines to prosecute cases for any number of reasons, including insufficient evidence or because a case is not a priority for enforcement.
But the number of declinations under Bondi marks a striking departure not only from the Biden administration but also the first Trump term, according to the ProPublica analysis, which examined two decades of DOJ data, including the first six months of Trump’s second term. ProPublica determined the increase is not the result of inheriting a larger caseload or more referrals from law enforcement.
In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.
Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.
The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.
In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”
The change in priorities was outlined in a series of memos sent to attorneys early last year. Trump’s DOJ has said it is “turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement” and emphasizing the pursuit of drug cartels, illegal immigrants and institutions that promote “divisive DEI policies.” Trump, in an address last March at the department, said the changes were necessary after a “surrender to violent criminals” during the past administration and would result in a restoration of “fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.”
The department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases in the first six months of the administration, which was nearly triple the number under the Biden administration and a 15% increase from the first Trump term. It has pursued fewer prosecutions of nearly every other type of crime — from drug offenses to corruption — than new administrations in their first six months dating back to 2009.
The DOJ has also closed hundreds of cases involving alleged crimes that the administration has publicly emphasized as enforcement priorities. Even as the Trump administration unleashed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency operatives to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, the DOJ declined over 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud. About three times as many cases of major fraud against the U.S. were declined under Trump compared with the average of similar time periods under prior administrations. And while the Trump administration has promised to “make America safe again,” its DOJ has declined more than 1,000 terrorism cases, also more than prior administrations.
Federal prosecutor Joseph Gerbasi had spent years in the department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section helping build cases against major suppliers of fentanyl ingredients in India and China. After Bondi came in, he was left bewildered when his team was ordered to abandon its work.
“All of the building blocks of what would become successful prosecutions were pulled out,” said Gerbasi, who retired as the section’s acting deputy chief for policy in March 2025 after 28 years with the department.
The move had an “overwhelming deflating effect on morale,” he said.
After Trump’s Inauguration, the Department of Justice Turned Down a Record Number of Cases
The first quarter of 2025, and especially February of that year, saw the department declining to prosecute cases against thousands of defendants outside of its regular six-month review process.
Source: DOJ data provided by TRAC Ken Morales/ProPublica
Barbara McQuade, who worked as a federal prosecutor in Michigan for two decades until 2017 during Republican and Democratic administrations, said it was not unusual for new administrations to come to office with a few “pet priorities” — such as a focus on violent crime or drug trafficking. But she said those changes usually involved modest adjustments in policy and that most of the decisions on what crimes to focus on were typically made at the local level by the district U.S. attorney in coordination with the FBI or other agencies.
“We would revise those about every five years, not having anything to do with any administration, just because it made sense,” she said.
A DOJ spokesperson, in an emailed response to questions about the spike in declinations, said that in “an effort to clean, remediate, and validate data in U.S. Attorneys’ case management system,” the department reviewed all pending criminal matters opened prior to the 2023 fiscal year, which included updating the status of closed cases. “This Department of Justice remains committed to investigating and prosecuting all types of crime to keep the American people safe, and the number of declinations is a direct result of our efforts to run the agency in a more efficient manner.”
The agency did not respond to questions about the types of cases declined.
The spike of declined cases began in February 2025 when the department ordered prosecutors to review every open case launched prior to October 2022 and determine whether to close it. Such a review would typically take months, according to one attorney tasked with reviewing cases. A memo, which was described to ProPublica reporters, ordered the review to be completed within 10 days.
Former DOJ prosecutors told ProPublica that they typically reviewed caseloads every six months with supervisors and that closing out languishing cases wouldn’t ordinarily be cause for concern. They said the February directive, however, was unusual. None could recall a similar order.
The directive came as higher-ups in the department had begun making frequent demands for data about specific types of cases and charging decisions, such as the outcome of fentanyl cases, according to former prosecutor Michael Gordon. Gordon, who helped prosecute Jan. 6 cases before moving to white-collar crime prosecutions, said the “fire drills” from officials in Washington became so regular that he grew used to the forlorn look on his supervisor’s face when he showed up at Gordon’s door, apologetically delivering yet another frantic request.
“It was either ‘give us stats we can use to make ourselves look good’ or ‘give us the stats to show how bad things are in this area,’” Gordon said. “It was never productive fact-finding.”
Though Gordon didn’t see the memo, he remembered getting the request to review all cases that had been open for more than two years and report back on their status, entering into a master spreadsheet basic information about any that he wanted to keep pursuing.
“The office was pushing us to close everything by a certain date so that when they had to report up to D.C. they had a low number of open cases,” he said. “You really had to go to bat to keep open a case that was more than two years old.”
Gordon said he was fired by the DOJ last June. He has filed a lawsuit alleging his termination was politically motivated. The department did not respond to questions about Gordon’s comments or his lawsuit. The government filed a motion to dismiss the case late last year, arguing that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over the matter. The court has not yet ruled on that motion, and the case is still pending.
Investigations into individuals or corporations declined for prosecution are generally not reported to courts and usually only disclosed in summary form by the DOJ in annual reports. To conduct its analysis, ProPublica obtained declination data from the DOJ and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a center that obtains data through Freedom of Information Act requests.
The DOJ Declined a Slew of Cases Shortly After Pam Bondi Was Confirmed as Attorney General
Nearly 11,000 criminal cases were declined during her first month in office.
Source: DOJ data provided by TRAC Ken Morales/ProPublica
Here are some of the areas most impacted by the spike in declinations.
Drugs
As president, Trump has spoken frequently about the “scourge” of drugs coming into the country. At the same time, the Justice Department has declined to prosecute nearly 5,000 cases of federal drug law violations, including trafficking and money laundering. The number of declinations were 45% higher than the average of the prior three new administrations.
Gerbasi, the counternarcotics prosecutor, declined to comment on specific cases that might have been declined in his office. But, he said, once Bondi was appointed, the priority in the office became building cases against Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan group that the Trump administration has labeled a foreign terrorist organization.
“Tren de Aragua was not anywhere close to the scale or impact of the cartels we were focused on,” Gerbasi said. “But we were told to generate those cases.”
He said his office had to scramble to fly people to investigate local gangs in small towns that were reportedly affiliated with Tren de Aragua. “They never would have merited a full-scale federal investigation,” he said.
“It told me that decisions were going to be based on political appearances and not based on the merits of where investigative resources should be placed.”
The DOJ declined to comment on Gerbasi’s remarks.
Trump’s DOJ Has Rejected Far More Cases Than Previous Administrations Across a Wide Range of Categories
Many of the dropped cases were in programs the DOJ has claimed were priorities.
Source: TRAC, DOJ
Note: “Other” primarily includes government regulatory offenses and theft. Comparison to average of past administrations only includes the first six months after a presidential administration change: Obama (2009), Trump (2017) and Biden (2021) Ken Morales/ProPublica
National Security
Under Bondi, the DOJ declined more than 1,300 cases involving terrorism and national security, nearly twice what was typical at the start of the most recent new administrations. While domestic terrorism was the hardest-hit program, just over 300 cases involving charges of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations were also dropped.
The DOJ program handling matters relating to national internal security — which considers cases of alleged spy activity and the security of classified information — saw over 200 declinations, which is four times as many as typical in the first six months of a new administration. Some of the cases related to serving as an unregistered foreign agent, a charge Bondi ordered prosecutors to stop pursuing unless they involved “conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.”
Jimmy Gurulé, a former federal prosecutor and George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Treasury Department who investigated the financing of terrorism, said the decline in terrorism cases was troubling.
“The Trump DOJ has been used as a political weapon,” he said. “It’s a question of prioritizing resources. Are they going to be used for national security threats or to prosecute his political enemies and critics?” The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on Gurulé’s remarks.
Labor
The DOJ shut down over 60 union corruption and labor racketeering cases, 2.5 times the number in Trump’s first term. Nearly half of the cases turned down for those offenses were out of the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office, which in the past has aggressively pursued alleged union corruption. All were noted as declined for insufficient evidence.
Most of those cases had been opened by Grady O’Malley, an assistant U.S. attorney who oversaw several prosecutions of union corruption while working in the New Jersey office over four decades. He retired in 2023 and was disturbed to learn from former colleagues that the office was shutting down the open union probes.
A Trump supporter, O’Malley said that while he doesn’t blame the president, he worries the decision to drop so many cases could embolden unions that he and his colleagues spent years working to hold accountable. “No one is assigned to do labor union cases, and the unions have every reason to believe no one is looking.”
The New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office said it had no comment on the declination of labor cases.
White-Collar Crime
The Trump administration has pledged to root out “rampant” fraud in federal benefit programs like food stamps and welfare. The controversial surging of federal agents to Minnesota in January began as a stated crackdown on noncitizens allegedly ripping off nutrition and child care programs.
The DOJ, however, shut down more than 900 cases of federal program or procurement fraud in the first six months of the administration, including one targeting a mortgage lender accused by several state regulators of defrauding the Federal Housing Administration. The case was dropped due to “prioritization of federal resources and interests.” The U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Alabama, which declined the case, did not reply to a request for comment. The number of fraud cases closed was about double that in the same time period of the Biden and first Trump administrations.
The agency also closed over 100 health care fraud cases as a result of “prioritization of resources and interests” even though the Trump administration has said it is making this area of enforcement a priority.
Among other cases the DOJ determined weren’t a priority: the probe into the Virginia nursing home accused of abuse, as well as investigations in Tennessee into fraud at a national hospital chain and one of the largest Medicaid managed care companies.
The Western District of Virginia U.S. attorney’s office, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the nursing home case. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee said the office does not comment on investigations that do not result in public charges.
The DOJ’s Antitrust Division, which focuses on preventing big businesses from creating harmful monopolies, also declined an unusually high number of cases in Trump’s second term. More than 40 cases were dropped within the first six months of Bondi’s tenure. That’s more than double the number declined in the same time period by the prior three new administrations.
Despite the declinations, the department said it charged slightly more people with fraud in 2025 compared with the final year of the Biden administration, and those cases alleged larger financial losses.
Promises Kept
The DOJ under Bondi has also rapidly pursued many of the priorities laid out in Trump’s early executive orders and her own “first day” directives to staff.
Trump in February 2025 issued an executive order pausing new investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits citizens and companies from bribing foreign entities to advance their business interests. The order asked the attorney general to review and “take appropriate action” on any existing probes to “preserve Presidential foreign policy prerogatives.”
In the first six months, Bondi’s DOJ shut down 25 such cases, which is more than the combined number dropped by the prior three new administrations over the same time period. One of the cases declined for prosecution involved a major car manufacturer, which had reported possible anti-bribery violations to federal investigators involving a foreign subsidiary. The DOJ declined the case for prosecution last June, citing the “prioritization of federal resources and interests.”
On her first day, Bondi ordered a review of criminal prosecutions under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE Act, which prohibits people from illegally blocking access to abortion clinics and places of worship. The department dropped as many cases under the act in its first six months as the past three new administrations combined, over the same time frame. Bondi’s order focused on “non-violent protest activity,” although at least one of the closed cases was being investigated as a violent crime. The DOJ has since charged protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and journalists in Minneapolis under the FACE Act. The defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty.
The agency closed three times the number of cases alleging environmental crimes as the Biden administration did and one-and-a-half times as many as compared with Trump’s first term. The declinations came as the DOJ reassigned and cut prosecutors working on environmental cases. One-fifth of all of the dropped environmental protection cases were shut down for “prioritization of federal resources and interests.”
How We Tracked Declined Cases
To quantify declined cases, ProPublica used data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The dataset consists of compiled FOIA responses of the United States attorneys offices’ criminal division case management system from January 2004 to July 2025, the latest available through TRAC. The data contains nearly 4 million unique cases involving individuals or organizations. We supplemented case details in the TRAC data with data directly from the DOJ.
We counted how many declinations were recorded in the first six months of Trump’s second term, compared with the same period of time for prior changes in presidential administration. That includes the first six months of the first Obama administration, the first Trump administration and the Biden administration.
Cases can have multiple defendants. Prosecutors can and do decline to prosecute some defendants in a case while pursuing prosecution for others. We counted each defendant separately.
Trump’s second administration inherited around 100,000 open criminal investigations, comparable to the number that Biden’s DOJ inherited. Under Trump, the DOJ declined 20% of these existing cases in its first six months, compared with Biden’s 11%. Referrals from law enforcement under Trump’s second administration were lower than the other incoming administrations in the data except for Biden, whose DOJ operated during the COVID-19 lockdown.
When looking at inherited investigations, we included only cases that were open at the start of a new administration. We excluded any that had progressed to prosecution, as those would no longer be eligible for a declination.
To understand which types of cases the DOJ was declining, we looked both at the area of the DOJ that was handling the case as well as the lead charge being considered. DOJ programs represent distinct areas of subject matter expertise within the department’s prosecution divisions. To further aggregate, we grouped together programs by subject matter, primarily relying on their categorization in the DOJ’s Offices of the United States Attorneys 2024 fiscal year annual statistical report. When reviewing cases by lead charge, sometimes referred to as the investigative charge, we considered them separately from the assigned DOJ program. According to the DOJ’s documentation, these are the “substantive statute that is the primary basis for the referral.” We used a large language model to help us identify charges of interest, which we then confirmed by hand by reviewing the statutes. About 2% of cases were sealed, with the DOJ program and lead charge information redacted.
Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration was originally published by ProPublica and is republished with permission.
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From left to right: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer and France's President Emmanuel Macron hold a meeting during a summit at Lancaster House on March 2, 2025, in London, England.
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Why Trump’s antics don’t work on our allies
Apr 09, 2026
It is among the most familiar patterns of the Trump era. First, the president says or does something weird, rude or otherwise norm-defying. Some elected Republicans object, and the response from Trump and his minions is to shoot the messenger. The dynamic holds constant whether it’s big (January 6 pardons) or small (tweeting “covfefe” just after midnight).
The essence of this low-road-for-me-high-road-for-thee dynamic rests on the belief that Trumpism is a one-way road. Insulting Trump, deservedly or not, is forbidden, while Trump’s antics should be celebrated when possible, defended when necessary, or ignored when neither of those responses is possible. But he should never, ever face consequences for his own actions.
This was the week Trump’s routine went global.
A number of longtime defenders of the transatlantic alliance are very angry at our allies.
NATO members have refused to allow American jets to launch from, or even over, their territory. They won’t help secure the Strait of Hormuz. French President Emmanuel Macron has even called for a coalition to “stand up” against both the United States and China.
I think these are serious strategic mistakes, especially Macron’s posturing to go out like a modern-day de Gaulle instead of as a lame duck. But politically, they are hardly shocking.
Let’s review how we got here.
Trump has routinely mocked our allies. For efficiency’s sake, let’s forgive all of the petty jabs from the first term ostensibly intended to get them to spend more on defense. In Trump’s second term, he claimed our NATO allies would never fight on our behalf, despite the fact that the only time NATO invoked Article 5 — an attack on one is an attack on all — was in the wake of 9/11.
Back in January, in Davos, Switzerland, Trump revised this false claim, admitting that some did fight in Afghanistan, but that “they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.” This infuriated not just allied leaders, but their voters. Indeed, Trump is even unpopular with the populist right across most of Europe.
On a per capita basis, Denmark, not America, had the most casualties in Afghanistan.
Speaking of Denmark, Trump threatened to go to war with the Danes to take possession of Greenland. The threats, public and private, were so relentless and serious that Denmark had to actually plan for a war against the U.S.
Trump didn’t go as far with Canada, but he poisoned that alliance with his repeated insistence that Canada should become America’s 51st state.
Trump also cut off most direct military aid to Ukraine, opting instead to strong-arm Europe into buying American weapons to boost our defense industry. And all while lending rhetorical aid and comfort to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Trump’s “peace envoy” talked up business deals with Russia.
Trump abrogated trade agreements with our allies to levy massive tariffs on nearly all of them, forcing many countries to pursue trade agreements with China. His erratic shifting of policies and rates sent allied economies scrambling. Trump’s American defenders may roll their eyes at his openness to emoluments — a plane from Qatar, a gold bar and Rolex from Swiss business leaders, a crown from South Korea — but just imagine how this stuff is viewed by the broader public in allied countries. Trump mocks notions of shared values, but if you bring him a trinket, he’ll talk.
Then Trump launched a surprise war on Iran without consulting our allies. When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested sending aircraft carriers to help, Trump mocked him.
“That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer,” Trump posted on Truth social. “But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”
Trump has since changed his tune. In his national address last week, Trump essentially called our allies cowards who needed to muster some “delayed courage.” On Monday, he explained he was done with NATO because they refused to give him Greenland.
Trump’s one-way-street antics work domestically because of his support within the GOP base. But he can’t incite a primary challenge to elected allied leaders, not when he’s loathed. In January his approval rating in the U.K. was 16 percent (and in Denmark just 4 percent). One in 5 Europeans see America as a greater threat than China or North Korea.
Again, I think it would be good for Europe—which has seen energy prices skyrocket because of the war and still needs the U.S. for its security—to swallow some of the humiliation and help. But the refusal of Trump and his defenders to acknowledge why it’s politically hard at this point is maddening.
Trump would never dream of taking a devastating political hit for an ally. But he and his defenders cannot fathom why allies feel the same way about him.
(Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.)
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An urgent look at the risks of unregulated artificial intelligence—from job loss and environmental strain to national security threats—and the growing political battle to regulate AI in the United States.
Getty Images, Douglas Rissing
AI Has Put Humanity on the Ballot
Apr 09, 2026
AI may not be the only existential threat out there, but it is coming for us the fastest. When I started law school in 2022, AI could barely handle basic math, but by graduation, it could pass the bar exam. Instead of taking the bar myself, I rolled immediately into a Master of Laws in Global Business Law at Columbia, where I took classes like Regulation of the Digital Economy and Applied AI in Legal Practice. By the end of the program, managing partners were comparing using AI to working with a team of associates; the CEO of Anthropic is now warning that it will be more capable than everyone in less than two years.
AI is dangerous in ways we are just beginning to see. Data centers that power AI require vast amounts of water to keep the servers cool, but two-thirds are in places already facing high water stress, with researchers estimating that water needs could grow from 60 billion liters in 2022 to as high as 275 billion liters by 2028. By then, data centers’ share of U.S. electricity consumption could nearly triple.
Meanwhile, there was a 26,362% increase in videos of child sex abuse last year, thanks to AI, and in only nine days, Grok shared 4.4 million images, at least 41 percent of which were sexualized images of women. Conversations with AI chatbots alone have already led two US teenagers to kill themselves and a 56-year old American to kill his mother and then himself, while Anthropic admitted that their AI model suggested it could blackmail and even “kill someone” to avoid being shut down.
Perhaps even more ominously, the Department of War wanted to use Anthropic to make fully autonomous weapons and conduct mass surveillance on Americans, threatening that the company better abandon their ethics rules or else. The Pentagon admitted they used Anthropic’s Claude in the kidnapping of President Maduro; now it may have been involved in the tragic bombing of a girls’ school in Iran, leading to the deaths of 168 children. As a former Lieutenant Commander, helicopter pilot, and mission commander, I’m horrified.
When unregulated AI has proven its potential to be a job-killing, resource-sucking, murderous machine, the fact that national AI regulations aren’t in place already is a failure of our federal government. Congress Republicans have tried to preempt states from regulating, arguing it will disrupt innovation in the industry, but they have no national alternative. The White House only just released a policy framework on March 20, suggesting a “light touch” at best in terms of regulation, but even if Congress did write this toothless and symbolic “regulation” (endorsed by Big Tech), Trump has already vowed he won’t sign anything until the SAVE Act–a thinly veiled voter suppression bill–passes.
Of course, Trump is dragging his feet. When the AI industry stands to rake in trillions of dollars per year, and Trump and tech billionaires have established such a clear symbiotic relationship of self-enrichment, it’s no surprise that the greediest among us are also the most likely to resist restraints. Establishing standards to promote child safety, support workers, stop deepfakes, and give you control of your data are all common sense, necessary, and popular positions, but threatening to Trump megadonors with a trillion-dollar bottom line. Protecting Americans against the dangers of AI will just have to wait.
Indeed, the battle over AI is being waged in the midterms. These tech oligarchs and their super PACs aim to defeat and intimidate lawmakers, signaling: “Try to regulate us, and we’ll ruin you.” Industry leaders have spent more than $11.18 million on the 2026 elections already, mostly in New York, but also Texas, Illinois, and North Carolina; now, a new “dark money” political group with close ties to Trump just pledged to spend at least another $100 million to push his AI agenda. Don’t let their dark money influence you. While there are cogent arguments for the value of AI (it improves personal efficiency, can increase accessibility for people with disabilities, and may have infinite potential in the field of medicine, etc.), unregulated AI is simply not worth defending.
We cannot afford to miss the boat like we did with social media. For now, we must personally regulate our relationship with this technology. If your field requires AI, then master it, but ensure you use it to optimize your personal impact and not as a crutch. Fortunately, this election cycle, we have a unique opportunity to beat the oligarchs and prove that Big Tech does not control our future. We the People can do it. So, please: talk to your friends, knock on doors, and vote. And in the meantime, cultivate your compassion, curiosity, creativity, and ethical judgement. The AI age may be upon us, but large language models cannot come to your improv show or introduce you to a new cuisine. Embrace what it means to be human.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.
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The Cracks in the Nonprofit System Are Built into Its Foundation
Apr 09, 2026
Across the nonprofit sector, signs of strain are becoming more visible. Staff turnover is rising, compliance demands are increasing, and community needs are growing more complex. Yet the funding structures that support this work remain largely unchanged. What appears today as instability is not a sudden disruption. It is the predictable outcome of a model that has relied on endurance rather than investment.
For decades, nonprofit organizations have been tasked with addressing society’s most persistent challenges. Domestic violence, homelessness, behavioral health, and poverty depend heavily on nonprofit infrastructure to deliver services and stabilize communities. The sector has sustained this responsibility not because it was designed to be durable, but because the people working within it continued to adapt under pressure. Commitment filled the gaps where investment was limited. That approach is now reaching its limits.
In his widely viewed TED Talk, The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong, social entrepreneur Dan Pallotta challenged a long-standing assumption about nonprofit work. He argued that nonprofits are expected to solve complex social problems while being restricted from investing in growth, talent, and infrastructure. Organizations are often judged by how little they spend rather than by the outcomes they produce. That expectation continues to shape funding practices today.
The demands placed on nonprofit organizations have expanded significantly. Programs must deliver measurable outcomes, maintain compliance with regulations, manage financial risk, protect confidentiality, and respond quickly to crises. These responsibilities require trained staff, reliable systems, and consistent leadership. They require capacity. Yet funding structures frequently prioritize short-term services over the infrastructure needed to sustain them.
Capacity building remains one of the most underfunded components of nonprofit operations. Investments in workforce development, supervision, data systems, and leadership are often labeled as overhead rather than recognized as essential infrastructure. When these functions are under-resourced, organizations operate reactively, addressing immediate needs while postponing long-term improvements. Over time, this pattern weakens stability and limits the ability to scale effective solutions.
The consequences are visible across service systems. Organizations struggle to retain experienced staff when compensation cannot keep pace with the demands of the workload. Training becomes inconsistent when resources are limited. Technology systems fall behind reporting requirements. Leaders spend more time responding to crises than strengthening operations. These challenges are not the result of poor management or lack of dedication. They reflect structural constraints embedded in the funding model itself.
In fields such as domestic violence and homelessness, the impact is particularly significant. Programs are responsible for safety, housing stability, and recovery from trauma. Survivors depend on coordinated, reliable, and responsive systems. When organizations lack the capacity to maintain staffing or implement consistent practices, the risk extends beyond operational inefficiency. It affects safety and accountability.
The nonprofit funding model has historically prioritized short-term outputs over long-term stability. Grants are often limited to short cycles, requiring organizations to repeatedly secure funding for ongoing services. Restrictions on spending may prevent investment in technology, workforce development, or leadership training, even when those investments would improve performance. Instead of building durable systems, organizations are expected to sustain services in the face of continuous uncertainty.
Other countries have shown that stability is possible. In New Zealand, multi-year funding agreements help reduce uncertainty and enable organizations to plan for the future. Stability is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.
Programs addressing domestic violence, homelessness, and behavioral health operate on timelines measured in years, not months. Workforce development, housing stability, and system coordination cannot be built within annual funding cycles. When funding remains uncertain, organizations shift their focus from long-term planning to short-term survival. This cycle reduces efficiency, increases turnover, and limits innovation.
Annual funding renewals also carry an administrative cost that is rarely acknowledged. Leaders and program staff spend significant time preparing applications, negotiating renewals, and advocating for continued support. That time is diverted from improving services and strengthening partnerships. The expectation that organizations must repeatedly justify essential services is not an efficient use of public resources.
One practical reform is the establishment of long-term, earmarked funding for core social services. Agencies responsible for safety, housing, and crisis response should have predictable funding streams dedicated to essential operations and capacity building. Earmarked dollars create stability, allowing organizations to hire staff with confidence, invest in training and technology, and plan strategically for the future.
Stable funding is not about increasing spending without oversight. It is about aligning funding timelines with the realities of the work. Social problems such as homelessness and domestic violence develop over years and require sustained intervention to resolve. Funding structures should reflect that reality.
The strain visible across the nonprofit sector is not temporary. It is a signal that the current model has reached its limits. Long-term solutions require long-term investment, sustained capacity building, and funding structures designed to support stability rather than survival.
The future of nonprofit work depends not only on compassion or dedication, but also on the willingness to build systems designed to last.
Stephanie Whack is a survivor of domestic violence, an advocate at the intersection of victimization and homelessness, and a member of The OpEd Project Public Voices Fellowship on Domestic Violence and Economic Security. In 2024, she was awarded the LA City Dr. Marjorie Braude Award for innovative collaboration in serving victims of domestic violence.
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