That doesn't strike me as a legitimate reason. I think it's got more to do with many DFL electeds coming up through the non-profit pipeline and not wanting to upset that, which is putting it kindly.
Having been on the state agency side of this, there are definitely things that can be improved with the competitive grants process. I would say their background in nonprofits means they have experience or at least awareness of how challenging it can be.
I suppose it would be frustrating if you genuinely believed that you were uniquely qualified to improve the community. But when has that actually happened? Think of all the education-adjacent nonprofits that have failed to impact the achievement gap, violence interrupters shooting people, etc…
My experience has been more with environmental projects and there are some pretty unique organizations doing creative work. There’s also generally too dang many that are doing pretty much the same things.
That is my main gripe. I know there are good nonprofits and good people working for nonprofits but it’s a lot of duplicative small scale stuff that’s hard to track. It’s also apparently fairly easy, or at least too common, for people to manipulate that system for personal gain, at least for awhile.
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