Summit County nonprofit leaders say the trickle down of federal decisions is evident in their current case loads, which many say is more intense than usual. 

Local nonprofits generally expect calls for assistance to ramp up in the fall as the weather gets cold, days get shorter and people deal with a lapse in employment between seasonal jobs during mud or shoulder season. This fall, though, they say there have been some added pressures to the services they provide. 

For the area’s primary advocacy center for victims of child abuse, funding struggles recently put it’s leaders back into panic mode. 

TreeTop Child Advocacy Center serves victims and their families in Colorado’s 5th Judicial District — Summit, Eagle, Lake and Clear Creek counties — by partnering with investigating agencies such as law enforcement and Child Protective Services. Executive director Amy Oliveira said the nonprofit is seeing an uptick in the amount of Summit County cases. On top of that, the nonprofit is becoming more involved in Eagle County, adding additional workload, and it recently introduced a mobile unit where it sends services to clients.  

Their officials thought that the center would have to close due to dire funding challenges in early 2024, but Oliveira kept the ship afloat with the help of the town of Breckenridge’s finance director Dave Byrd, who lent his expertise to the nonprofit. 

She said pains caused by a drop in federal funding has been intense as of late. The center heavily relies on funds attained from the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. In prior years the center received around $300,000 in federal funding, but that dropped to around $170,000 in 2024 and to around $112,000 for 2025. Now, 2026’s federal funding is around $84,000. Oliveira said they are being told to expect an additional 12% cut for 2027. 

“We are extremely worried. … We are pretty heavily relying on local government,” she said, noting the increasing case load. 

The Family and Intercultural Resource Center is similarly experiencing a growing number of people who are requesting assistance. Executive director Brianne Snow said they are serving around 650 families a week. This is around 80 families more per week compared to this time last year. 

She said typically rising costs related to rents, groceries, child care and other life expenses bring people to the food market offered by the resource center, but there seems to be something more at play here.

“The trajectory just keeps going up, and so it’s really hard to understand what we can attribute it to,” she said. 

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The Family & Intercultural Resource Center saw a 60% increase in the amount of people it served in its food pantries from 2022 to 2023, and those numbers have only continued to grow.

Like TreeTop, funding sources are also drying up for the Family and Intercultural Resource Center. She said there’s very limited available funding for purchasing food out there right now, and she’s a bit wary of something else coming down the pipeline. 

The resource center does not have any direct funding from the federal government, but it works closely with and receives support from Food Bank of the Rockies, which does receive federal funds. The Associated Press reported Oct. 6 that an $8 billion cut to a Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children would force states to supply their own funding to fill the gap. Snow said, as of Oct. 6, there are no impacts to the Food Bank of the Rockies she’s heard of, but she said the possibility of funding cuts isn’t off the table. 

On the mental health side of things, nonprofit Building Hope is heading into its busy season, and their officials say this one feels heavy. 

“I think there’s been a lot of community unrest and just desire for resources and mental health support given a lot of the things that have been happening in the community lately,” executive director Kellyn Ender said, noting fear in the community following recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the county and a string of deaths among other events. 

She said they luckily aren’t impacted by federal funding, but they feel impacts of it through the people that visit them and use their services.