Over the past decade, human services organizations across the U.S. have faced a wave of disruptions, including a planned 25% reduction in employees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a high demand for services Post-COVID (so much so that 56% of mental health providers cannot take on new patients). Not to mention, the policy overhauls, shifting grant eligibility, and growing reporting requirements have created significant challenges for nonprofits.
Federal support for homelessness prevention, mental health, workforce development, and reentry services is uncertain, with the FY26 budget cutting HUD spending by 44% from the previous year. Many agencies are still grappling with operational and financial instability as the federal funding sources are unclear.
In this climate of uncertainty, technology has become a way for nonprofits to take control of their day-to-day planning, budgeting, and decision-making. PlanStreet offers powerful, purpose-built solutions that help organizations survive funding fluctuations with increased transparency, efficiency, and measurable outcomes.
What's Changed in Federal Funding for Nonprofits
In recent years, federal funding has seen ebbs and flows depending on the leadership in office. Many grant programs have been paused, consolidated, or reshaped with stricter compliance requirements. Some of the notable changes have included:
- $1 billion in federal grants have been paused, which previously funded hiring mental health professionals in school districts.
- Grants for homelessness have been adjusted from competitive applications to block grants, which decreases the transparency of how grants are used.
- Upcoming policy shifts are leaning toward cutting funds for permanent supportive housing.
Major changes like these lead to delayed disbursement cycles and unpredictable renewal, increasing the competition among nonprofits.
The New Reality: Do More with Less
Whether you're a nonprofit managing youth services, a government agency handling workforce development, or a shelter navigating homelessness prevention efforts, the pressure is the same. Nonprofits are expected to:
- Maintain the most important programs, even though funding is harder to come by and expenses are rising.
- Serve more people as vulnerable populations suffer from reductions in government funding.
- Diversify their funding streams in anticipation of fewer grants.
- Attract quality talent to deliver services, even though it can be difficult with lower budgets (which often lead to burnout and high turnover rates. In 2023, a study from Japan found that workers at long-term care facilities with higher compensation had lower levels of burnout.)
- Prove their impact in the community to receive support from individuals and private companies.
Manual systems and siloed data can't keep up with these complicated expectations. Instead, agencies need to switch to case management software for human services.
How PlanStreet Software Solves the Funding Challenge
PlanStreet helps organizations of every size with tools that simplify compliance, elevate outcomes, and streamline operations, making it easier to secure funding and deliver services effectively.
Centro Amistad uses PlanStreet to visualize and pull reports for their board members and grant opportunities. They can show specifics, such as how many youth or kids they saw in the last quarter, and share them with funders.
Grant Compliance Made Simple
PlanStreet offers a comprehensive grant compliance software designed to help organizations maintain compliance with grant requirements through several key features:
- Customizable Compliance Tracking: PlanStreet can be changed to match the rules of each grant. This lines up spending, outcomes, and documentation with funder requirements.
- Automated and Centralized Reporting: Generate customizable reports and visualizations, including monthly grant expenditures, compliance reviews, performance tracking, and quarterly outcomes assessments, proving compliance for audits and funder reviews. Plus, your team can utilize pre-built templates for HUD, DOJ, HHS, and local government reports.
- Transparent Grant Management: PlanStreet tracks each grant's history, making it easier to demonstrate accountability to funders and auditors. The software ensures funds are only used within the permitted time frame and for approved purposes.
- Secure Data Handling: The platform is HIPAA-compliant and has multiple security controls, protecting sensitive grant and client information to meet federal requirements.
- Stakeholder Engagement: PlanStreet's client and donor portals allow for fast updates and provide stakeholders with quick access to reports and documents.
- Audit Readiness: By automating documentation and maintaining detailed grant records, PlanStreet helps organizations remain audit-ready and accountable throughout the grant lifecycle.
Real-Time Data for Smarter Decisions
To make the best decisions, nonprofits need hard facts on what works and what doesn't. PlanStreet provides this with readable dashboards that track your organization's most important KPIs, such as service delivery, outcomes, and caseloads.
Our mental health reporting tools include custom analytics for different departments. Each staff member can track the results needed to improve their programs. These results can help writers prepare grant applications full of data that shows actionable successes.
The Parenting Center uses PlanStreet to track their incoming referrals, making it easier to access the information faster. They can also see where each client is coming from, allowing them to focus their recruiting on sources that are successful. PlanStreet helps the nonprofit with continuous improvement, seeing what The Parenting Center is doing well and what they can improve on.
Integrated Financial Management
Managing the budget from a federal grant can be a massive challenge from the very beginning. 72% of nonprofits report that application requirements are complex and time-consuming. PlanStreet integrates financial features alongside case management to reduce the time spent tracking every dollar. Some of our features include:
- Grant-specific budget tracking by case, program, or region
- Alerts for under- or over-utilized funding
- Financial reporting aligned with performance outcomes
- Automated invoicing accessible through the client portal
Configurable to Fit Any Program
Whether you're looking for grant reentry program software or youth case management software, PlanStreet's interface can be customized to fit the programs at your nonprofit.
PlanStreet offers highly customizable user interfaces and dashboards, allowing organizations to tailor layouts, data visualizations, and reporting tools to match their workflows and metrics. Power BI integration further enables configurable analytics and end-to-end views for case workers and managers.
Additional customization options in PlanStreet include:
- Forms: Design your own intake forms or choose from the existing template library, with features such as conditional fields, data validation, e-signatures, and custom layouts.
- Workflows: Tasks, approvals, and alerts are also configurable, so processes can be automated and adapted to organizational requirements.
- Reports: PlanStreet enables users to build tailored reports for different stakeholders, funders, or internal purposes. Reports can be customized for content, format, and data sources, and exported in various formats, including Excel and PDF.
- Integration and Scalability: PlanStreet integrates easily with existing software, tools, and technology stacks, and can grow to support organizations of any size or complexity.
Supporting Every Corner of Human Services
Human services is full of passionate people who care about meeting the needs of their clients, whether they are social workers, executive directors, health education specialists, program coordinators, or volunteers. PlanStreet works with agencies and organizations across a wide range of sectors, including:
Homelessness Services
It can be beyond stressful to ensure everyone in your community has a safe place to sleep. PlanStreet can be a trusted partner. Our specialized HMIS tools simplify case management so that you can better care for each client. Our homelessness prevention technology can track:
- HUD-compliant data
- Housing placements
- Bed management
- Service referrals
- Client demographics
- Shelter occupancy
"PlanStreet is very helpful with our co-workers. If someone's out, we can go into their notes and see what's happening. We were able to fine-tune PlanStreet to meet our individual needs, so they're very flexible as part of the setup that was established" - Denise Renee Noris, Eviction Mediation Program Coordinator | Center for Housing and Community Studies, UNCG
Reentry Programs
Case managers in reentry programs typically have one goal in mind: decrease recidivism, putting their clients on track to live safe and healthy lives. PlanStreet's reentry program software works with the needs of your organization and can help you:
- Coordinate multi-agency care plans
- Monitor recidivism risk
- Create case plans with a personalized builder
- Implement comprehensive assessment measures
- Understand the holistic risk and needs analysis levels
Youth Services and Foster Care
Case managers in foster care must follow strict privacy guidelines for the safety of the children they work with. PlanStreet's youth case management software offers convenient tools you can use on a phone or tablet while still maintaining compliance.
Our foster care software can help with:
- Tracking foster parent recruitment and certification.
- Managing adoptions to help future parents succeed.
- Customized checklists to ensure no one slips through the cracks.
- Streamlining child intake forms to organize critical information during intake.
- Building an available families database to house children in need quickly.
"If I'm in the community educating, and a family comes up to me and I'm telling them about our pantry...I'm able to hop right on my phone and schedule them through PlanStreet... We find folks are a little bit shy to make a call to ask for help, but if it's a link online where they fill out their information, then it comes to me in an email, then I reach out to you... it tampers that anxiety a little bit more. We are able to get people to services directly right there and then using our smartphone." - Janna Gordon, Executive Director | The Brooke Hancock Family Resource Network
Workforce Development
One of the key ways to solve the housing crisis is to facilitate workforce development. Communities need programs to match workers with the opportunities in their area. PlanStreet's workforce development software helps nonprofits to:
- Create and manage skills assessments.
- Provide access to educational resources.
- Track training completion, job placements, and employer outcomes.
Behavioral Health
In 2023, 59 million adults in the United States struggled with a mental illness, but 46% of them had no treatment. Mental health professionals oftentimes have larger caseloads than they can reasonably manage, leading to burnout and high turnover rates. PlanStreet helps behavioral health professionals create healthy workdays with the following tools:
- Customizable case boards to manage notes and services
- Detailed documentation of each step in a patient's journey
- Documents with conditional logic to reduce paperwork during intake
- Increased client communication through convenient portals.
"With PlanStreet, we can pull numbers and present them to funders. So that gave us a lot of possibilities to work on a more professional level with the clinics that we're working with." - Jorge De Santiago, Executive Director | Centro Amistad
The Road Ahead: Weather the Storm with PlanStreet
Funding will continue to shift due to policy, economics, and community needs. Agencies that invest in case management software like PlanStreet will be better prepared to adapt, scale, and prove their impact. With PlanStreet's built-in analytics and reporting, nonprofits can easily demonstrate outcomes that strengthen future grant applications.
PlanStreet's mission is to ensure that technology never becomes a barrier to service delivery, but rather, the tool that powers your success. Ready to future-proof your programs and maximize your funding potential? Schedule a demo to see how PlanStreet can help your organization stay resilient, data-driven, and fully compliant today.