Immigration fears and decreasing donations are among the biggest concerns facing local charities in Santa Barbara.

The 2025 Nonprofit Summit was held on Thursday at the County Administration Building in Santa Barbara, bringing together representatives from local organizations to talk about new trends and challenges facing the sector.

The event was organized by the office of Assemblyman Gregg Hart, D-Santa Barbara, who hosted a panel of leaders of local nonprofit organizations.

The panel, titled “Service at a Crossroads,” discussed various issues that nonprofits are facing today. Speakers shared stories of losing funding under cuts from the Trump administration, an inability to find workers, and just fear throughout the community.

Erica Jane Flores is the CEO of Santa Ynez Valley People Helping People, which was formed in 1992 to help families suffering from food insecurity. Since then, the organization has evolved to address mental health and other issues.

One of the struggles Flores said the organization is dealing with is a loss of funds, which is used to secure food for families.

Flores said making their job harder is raids by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

During a distribution last week, news of arrests in Santa Maria spread through people lined up for food. Flores said many people left the line, and others who planned to come did not.

“We were poised to respond to being the safety net and closing the gap with privately purchased food so that those that may be impacted by delays of their SNAP benefits so that we can meet it,” Flores said. “But what we weren’t poised to do is to change on a dime and address somebody’s fear while that was happening in real time.”

One way the organization has attempted to address the problem is by bringing the distribution inside buildings.

Tere Jurado, director of the Santa Barbara Christmas Parade along Milpas Street, said she has noticed a change in the community regarding ICE agents.

Jurado said that even though the parade usually occurs on the second weekend of December, she is worried about this year’s event. She said businesses along Milpas Street have expressed fear of holding an event that could draw a large crowd to one place and attract ICE.

Four nonprofit organizations that usually help during the parade have already canceled this year.

“I have never seen something like this,” Jurado said. “In the past, people didn’t want to participate because they were working, they were busy. They had lives.”

Alana Walczak, the CEO of CALM Santa Barbara, emphasized the need for people at nonprofit organizations to take care of themselves. She acknowledged that leaders need to pay attention to the news to serve their community, but she encouraged them to regulate how much they take in.

“You need to take care of yourself,” she said. “You need to get to sleep. You need to eat. We need to find community. We need to build bridges and have friendships.”

Also speaking at the event was Geoff Green, CEO of CalNonprofits, who discussed the challenges that organizations are facing. The group has 2,000 member organizations and focuses on research, data and providing webinars.

In California, Green said the organization is advocating for a governor who is friendlier to the nonprofit community. Green explained that they have failed to convince Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign legislation that would help these organizations and never received a clear answer on why.

Green also spoke about new executive orders signed by President Donald Trump, explaining that they are not laws but directives for the Executive Branch.

He called the orders threats with the intent to intimidate organizations into pulling back on initiatives such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). However, Green said there is no legal definition and no way to make it illegal.

“We have to remember that a lot of this is signal and noise,” Green said. “It is not changing the law.”

One concern Green had was the erosion of the Johnson Amendment, which prevents nonprofit organizations from endorsing political candidates or being partisan. He explained that eroding the act could have massive consequences on elections in the future.

“That means nonprofits potentially could become a massive dark money pit to the tune of billions of dollars into our partisan political system,” Green said. “That would undermine the credibility that we all have.”

Another trend that Green highlighted was that fewer households are donating to charities than in the past. Despite reaching nearly $600 billion in donations every year in the United States, a growing share is coming from the ultra-wealthy and less is coming from individual households.

Green attributed the change to the 2017 tax code passed in the first Trump administration.

Despite the difficulties facing nonprofit organizations, Green said a recent survey by CalNonprofits showed that many organizations are managing to survive. Of all the respondents, 58% said they are holding steady despite the challenges.

“The silver lining of this moment is that many, many more organizations are joining up with alliances,” Green said, “and realizing that they need to be in that united policy fight and that solidarity really does matter at a time like this.”