What to do when DOGE contacts your nonprofit

On April 11, Nicholas Turner received a curious email from someone representing the Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump administration program tasked with cutting government funding and agencies. But Turner doesn’t work for the government; he’s the president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice, a well-known nonprofit organization based in New York City that was founded in the 1960s to focus on criminal justice reform efforts.

Over the years, Vera had applied for and received various government grants – though the Trump administration had abruptly canceled all of its federal grants a week earlier. After learning that Vera no longer had any government grants, the DOGE representatives cut off communications with Vera – without clarifying why they believed that they had the authority to order around an independent nonprofit organization.

Turner saw DOGE’s aggressive stance toward Vera as the latest sign of the Trump administration’s war on nonprofit civil society. Many nonprofit groups have already been hurt by the federal government’s grant funding freeze, and there are rumors that President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order directing the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status from certain universities and nonprofit advocacy groups working on immigration and climate change issues.

City & State sat down with Turner to discuss his interactions with DOGE and how nonprofit groups should prepare to address attacks from the Trump administration. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you first learn that Vera’s federal funding had been pulled?

On April 4, we received an email informing us that five currently in-progress grants of different maturity were immediately terminated. So then we checked, and we were locked out of the grant control system.

How long had Vera been receiving federal funding?

Whether it’s continuous or not, I can’t say, but my recollection is that Vera has received federal funding probably since the early ’70s, and through Democratic and Republican administrations. That money has come in two forms. One is grants, or what they often call cooperative agreements, through the Department of Justice that support what’s called technical assistance that we provide to jurisdictions on various substantive issues or that cover research that we do. Then from 2005 until 2023, we were the prime contractor for two quite significantly large immigration contracts. In 2023, we spun those off into a successor organization called the Acacia Center for Justice. I think that both of those contracts have been either entirely eliminated or dramatically reduced.

What did you do after the grants were suddenly terminated?

I’ll walk you through the chronology. So Friday, the 4th of April, we received the termination. We’re locked out of the system. We respond by letter to (U.S.) Attorney General (Pam) Bondi in the middle of that next week. Then on the 11th, I received an email from a DOGE staffer named Nate Cavanaugh, who was, I guess, stationed at the General Services Administration. That email basically said that he was seeking to talk with me by the following Monday about having a DOGE team assigned to us, and that if I failed to respond, the assumption would be that we are choosing to not comply with the executive order. He did not specify what executive order.

What were your first thoughts after you received this email from DOGE?

So our reaction immediately was one of surprise, because from our experience, other than DOGE cutting contracts and grants and things of that nature, we had never heard of DOGE infiltrating or installing itself or engaging with an independent organization. The second thing that we were very concerned about was that this was retaliatory, that it was, in fact, in response to the fact that we were loud about the DOJ funding being cut.

What happened on the call with DOGE representatives?

When we informed them that we had no federal funding, they basically said, “OK, well, then this conversation’s void, never mind.” I just want to let you know we were prepared to file suit. We saw there was no jurisdiction for them to do this, that it might have been retaliation for our using our First Amendment rights. Obviously, we didn’t end up needing to go forward. What we learned prior to the call was that these two folks – Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Aimonetti – had been involved in what I’ll just describe as the takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which is a nonprofit, but distinguishable from Vera because it was congressionally created and is largely funded through congressional appropriations and has a board that includes (Defense Department Secretary Pete) Hegseth and (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio and so on. They were both involved, so by the time that we had the call with them, we were quite concerned that this might be heading in a similar, nasty direction.

Did Cavanaugh and Aimonetti say that DOGE wanted to take over the Vera Institute?

They sort of (said) that they believe that they have jurisdiction to assign a team, install themselves, infiltrate – whatever word you want to use – (to) any agency or institution that receives congressional appropriations. So, broadly, that would be any organization that gets federal funding. I believe that the exact words were “agency or institution that receives a congressional appropriation.” It’s ambiguous. You can read that narrowly as the U.S. Institute of Peace. But yet they were calling us. I mean, other than the fact that “institute” is in our name, we’re a fully independent institution. There’s been no mistaking us as a part of government, and we received federal funds through a competitive process. So it was ambiguous and strange, but they certainly did seem to indicate that they thought that they had some justified jurisdiction in this space.

What advice do you have for other nonprofits that might receive an email from DOGE?

If there is a DOGE incursion, there’s a very open question, and a question to be litigated upon, what authority DOGE has to invest its energies in independent organizations. That could very well be subject to litigation and request for a (temporary restraining order). The advice that I would have is, if DOGE were to come knocking on the door of any nonprofit that is independent and receives federal money, that there is a litigation strategy. There are resources that are available. Democracy Forward, the ACLU and others have been preparing for this eventuality.

Do you think the range of threats to nonprofits has expanded under the Trump administration?

Yes. I think that the big picture here is that the Trump administration is pursuing an effort to kneecap civil society. As we have seen, they’ve done it with academia; they’ve done it with law firms; they’ve done it with (the) media; and (nongovernmental organizations) are sort of the next front. They’ve obviously been doing it by cutting funding for NGOs, but I think this (potential) effort to probably question the tax-exempt status of a number of NGOs will hobble their ability to raise money privately. To put out an (executive order) saying that organizations that are working on climate or immigration are working “contrary to the national interest” is a massive escalation of aggression and weaponization of the tools of government.

If Vera’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status were revoked, do you think you could still raise money from private donors?

It’s pure speculation on my part, but I would say that I don’t know that it would be existential, but I think it would be profoundly hobbling, and that we would see much, much fewer donations. You take away that incentive, you know, maybe people will adjust in that new environment, but I think that the tax deduction is a big part of why people and institutions do make charitable contributions.

Is there anything you’d like to see the state government do to protect nonprofits from the Trump administration?

We were certainly talking about whether it made sense to get in touch with the (state) attorney general – because we’re incorporated here in New York – with the attorney general’s Charities Bureau, and it may well have an interest in protecting the nonprofits that are incorporated here. Had that meeting with DOGE gone differently, then we would have. But because we realized that we did not need to litigate, that sort of slowed it down.

Do you think the Trump administration will primarily target large, well-known nonprofit organizations?

Yes, that have some element of federal funding. Lots of large nonprofit organizations don’t take government money. The ACLU doesn’t take government money. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund doesn’t take government money. Brennan Center doesn’t take government money. But if you are an organization like us, where we have a mix of funding – or used to have a mix of funding, rather – then you’re potentially at risk. And my sense is they’re looking for big targets. They’re not going to waste their time on small ones. They want to make examples and have those examples reverberate through fields and sectors.

Do you think it makes sense for large nonprofits to stop applying for federal funding to insulate themselves from this?

I think it depends on the kind of work that you’re doing. If you think about Vera, we work on criminal justice reform and immigrant rights. I guess I would describe those as being wedge issues. This administration has determined that anyone who works with immigrants is, in some form or fashion, from the administration’s perspective, working against the interests of ending the invasion of America. So if you do that kind of work, I think you should think twice about whether you want to get any federal funding or end that funding.