Many government departments have been affected by federal spending cuts this year, with mass layoffs, pulled grants, and incoming budget proposals that could eliminate more programs.
These budgetary decisions will have a significant impact on local nonprofits, including South Plains Community Action Association, or SPCAA.
SPCAA is a nonprofit based in Levelland that serves approximately 114 counties in Texas, almost half the state. It has six divisions: Child Care, Community Services, Housing, Head Start and Early Head Start, Health Services, and SPARTAN Transportation.
Some of the programs within those divisions include Workforce Solutions, the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) nutrition program, and utility and weatherization assistance.
Samantha Mendoza is the communications director for SPCAA. She said that when it comes to nonprofits and their programs, a lot of people don’t know where the funding comes from.
“For the most part, it starts at the very top of the Congressional Budget and gets filtered down to government agencies and then down to the states,” Mendoza explained. “But eventually it gets back to us.”
While SPCAA provides service for the city of Lubbock, most of its coverage and the bulk of its assistance is in rural communities.
“We always say that the distances are vast, but the need is even greater,” Mendoza said. “Rural communities feel economic instability. They feel cost of living. They feel inflation and high cost of food and gas and all of that. They bear that weight just as much as the rest of the state does, if not more.”
SPCAA tries to be the first stepping stone for people who need extra help. According to Mendoza, a big part of providing that help is making connections in the community.
“It looks like your neighbor, it looks like me and you, it looks like anybody that you can pass across the street,” she said. “That's who our clients are. It's not exclusive to just elderly folks or people on Medicaid. It's anybody and everybody.”
The reach and impact of SPCAA programs is at risk of becoming smaller when it comes to potential cuts to funding like the Community Services Block Grant.
“This past year, in 2024, we had 1.5 million units of service,” Mendoza explained. “And that looks like people going into WIC clinics for their appointments, Head Start children enrolled in our centers, people hopping on a SPARTAN bus to get to and from their dialysis appointments. Elderly folks looking for weatherization assistance, job seekers who are looking for career development and training. That's 1.5 million units of service that – it's not going to stay the exact same. If that funding gets reduced, it then gets naive, for sure, to assume that we're going to be able to operate at the same magnitude that we're operating.”
Without SPCAA, Mendoza said many of these communities don’t have other organizations to step in and fill the gaps, so families and individuals would lose assistance altogether.
“If that's the only Head Start in your county, or that's the only WIC clinic in your county, and the funding goes away for that, and those clinics or those Head Start centers have to shut down, you might not have another option for hundreds of miles,” she said.
As part of its more than 100 counties, SPCAA’s “core 14” are the rural counties surrounding Lubbock: Bailey, Cochran, Crosby, Dickens, Floyd, Garza, Hale, Hockley, King, Lamb, Lynn, Motley, Terry, and Yoakum. For each of those counties, SPCAA has provided community impact reports, explaining how they would be affected by potential budget cuts.
In Hockley County, SPCAA provided more than $400,000 in utility assistance in 2024 and nearly $130,000 in snacks and meals for Head Start students.
“That's something physical and tangible that you can point to and say if this is gone, these are the ramifications,” Mendoza said. “This is the effect that it's going to have on this community.”
In Terry County in 2024, the organization spent almost $450,000 in its Head Start partnership with Brownfield ISD, including contributions to teacher salaries.
Over in Hale County, according to the U.S. census, about 1 in 5 residents are living below the federal poverty line. A similar ratio does not have any health insurance coverage. Meanwhile, SPCAA offerings like the Health Insurance Navigator Program and the Transition Out of Poverty Program are at risk of being eliminated.
“I would say all of the programs that we offer are at risk,” Mendoza added.
When facing uncertainty, Mendoza said the organization has been taking it day by day, while also planning for the future as much as possible.
“We stay tuned in to what is happening on the hill, what's happening in Congress. We, of course, keep very close contact with our state agencies,” she said. “We take guidance from them and try to make sure that we're giving accurate information. We also operate business as usual until it's no longer business as usual.”
For the time being, the South Plains Community Action Association is continuing and even expanding its services.
SPCAA is always enrolling for Head Start. And Mendoza said it has made some upgrades to SPARTAN transportation, which is currently offering Saturday services in Levelland and Plainview, rather than the typical Monday through Friday. And has started an on demand service for both cities through an app, similar to Uber or Lyft, but for only $1 each way.
SPCAA operates a food box in Hockley County – which provides assistance to around 600 families – and recently opened a new one in Terry County.
“It was such a celebratory moment, but it was also a very emotional moment,” Mendoza recalled. “Because we've got those community members that work for us, and they care so much about their neighbors, they care so much about their community, and they work so hard at their job to be able to make sure that their neighbors are taken care of.”
Taking care of their neighbors is also what Mendoza has recommended to clients, business partners, and local elected officials as they reach out with concerns about losing funding and programs: keeping up with the headlines and the discussion in Congress, but also talking to community members who benefit from the services currently at risk.
Mendoza encourages people to contact their representatives about their concerns and to show support of organizations like SPCAA: “They are our representatives for a reason.”
Regardless of what happens, Mendoza said South Plains Community Action will do everything it can to serve those who need it.
“We'll still be here,” she said. “And we'll still be able to offer assistance in whatever way that we can with whatever we have.”