The Guilford County Board of Commissioners is having to rethink how it distributes nearly $1.8 million in taxpayer money to community-based organizations after changes in the new state budget restricted the use of race- and gender-based criteria by local governments.
The commissioners normally decide during the summer which nonprofit organizations, festivals, museums, arts groups, social service agencies and other community organizations will receive county funding for the fiscal year that began July 1.
This year, however, that process has been put on hold while county officials determine what changes have to be made to comply with the new state law. The commissioners and staff will discuss the new process at a work session on Thursday afternoon, August 6.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston said the county can no longer use language favoring organizations or businesses based on race, gender or other diversity, equity and inclusion considerations.
He said it is basically the criteria of the Trump administration working its way through North Carolina Republican leaders.
Alston said, “We can’t have any DEI things in there; it can’t be agenda-specific items in there, and it’s got to be race-neutral.”
The chairman said the changes affect more than the annual distribution of money to community-based organizations and could require the county to revise or rebid contracts that include minority- or women-owned business participation requirements.
Last year, the county changed the name of the Guilford County MWBE (Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises) Department to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Department after the federal government started cutting off funding and threatening to go after anyone who offered programs meant to help minorities.
“We’ve got to put on hold all our contracts for services,” Alston said this week given the new state law. “All of that has to be rebid with that language – anything about minority participation or women-only.”
The changes were included in Senate Bill 257, the state budget bill signed into law on Tuesday, July 7.
The budget eliminated the state Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses and removed references to minority participation goals from a long list of state contracting laws. The changes also affect the authority local governments have used to establish minority- and women-owned business participation programs.
The full effect on the county’s community-based organization funding process isn’t clear yet. Those awards aren’t the same as construction contracts or purchases subject to competitive bidding; however, county officials are reviewing the process to make certain that the criteria and language used to award the money comply with the new law.
Until a few years ago, the Guilford County budget process for funding nonprofits was largely conducted in public.
The county manager and a staff committee reviewed applications from nonprofits and community-based organizations and made recommendations to the Board of Commissioners. The commissioners then held public work sessions to decide which groups would receive taxpayer money and how much each would get.
A lot of taxpayers don’t like seeing county government use their money for those purposes – especially during a difficult economy and right after both Guilford County and the City of Greensboro imposed large property tax increases.
The decisions have often been controversial because commissioners sometimes had direct or indirect ties to nonprofit organizations that received county money. Organizations with connections to commissioners have often been referred to as “pet projects.”
Beginning with the fiscal 2024-2025 budget, the commissioners stopped receiving public recommendations from the county manager. The board conducted the selection process behind closed doors and revealed the final list of organizations when the decisions had already been made.
The Rhino Times described the process at the time as being like Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments.
This year, as in the previous two years, the county manager’s recommended budget didn’t include a proposed list of organizations. It simply set aside about $1.8 million for community-based organization funding.
For years, the commissioners have periodically instructed county staff to develop a rational and fair policy for distributing the money.
A few years ago, then-Budget Director Toy Beeninga, now a deputy county manager, along with his staff, developed a detailed funding policy at the board’s direction. The commissioners unanimously adopted it in the spring and then promptly and completely ignored it when budget season arrived.
The board has gone through that same exercise at least half a dozen times this century. Each time, county staff has spent months developing criteria – and each time the commissioners adopted the policy and then threw it out the window when it’s time to distribute the money.
Last year, Alston described the county’s actual policy this way: “The policy is this: Whatever non-profits five commissioners say get money, do get money.”
The result has been a hodgepodge of organizations with no apparent connection to a consistent set of county priorities.
Some of the organizations do good work. Others, not so much. With still others, it’s difficult to determine exactly what they do.
Commissioners also regularly have to abstain from voting on awards to specific organizations because of conflicts of interest.
One organization that has already received money in the fiscal 2026-2027 budget is the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, which was awarded $200,000. The museum was co-founded by Alston, who remains closely involved in its operation.
The remaining community-based organization money will be distributed after the board determines how to proceed under the new state requirements.
Alston said the new restrictions were included in the massive state budget with little attention given to how they would affect counties and cities.
He said the changes appear to be part of a broader state and federal effort to eliminate DEI policies from government contracting and spending.
For Guilford County, the immediate result is that a nonprofit-funding process that was already inconsistent and difficult to follow
