Democrats urge OPM to continue ‘vital’ Combined Federal Campaign

As the future of the Combined Federal Campaign hangs in the balance, Democrats in Congress are urging the Trump administration to continue the long-standing charitable donation program for federal employees.

Dozens of lawmakers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), warned that shuttering the CFC program would “disrupt and destabilize” thousands of charitable organizations that depend on it. They called for the Office of Personnel Management to maintain the CFC in 2026 and beyond.

“OPM has taken several actions to undermine the CFC,” the group of Democrats wrote Thursday in a letter addressed to OPM Director Scott Kupor. “We are concerned that the program now faces imminent closure.”

It’s not yet clear whether the CFC will continue this year. An OPM spokesperson told Federal News Network that the agency has not made a final decision on running the campaign.

But OPM took steps earlier this year that signaled a potential end to the program. In February, the agency announced that it would be decommissioning the CFC’s online donation portal by early March. The CFC website now includes a message stating that the portal is being decommissioned. It urges participants to retrieve receipts and other documents before the site goes fully dark.

“The site may be taken offline at any moment,” the website states.

In response to the website’s decommissioning, Democrats are flagging potential ripple effects for participating organizations if the CFC is shuttered.

“The recent decommissioning of online portals for participating charities and donors represents a significant threat to their work,” they wrote. “In light of the strong return on investments delivered by the CFC and the lifeline it represents for charities across the nation, we urge you to preserve this vital program.”

For more than 60 years, the CFC program has run an annual governmentwide donation drive, letting federal employees contribute to thousands of charities worldwide via payroll deductions. The CFC program has raised a cumulative $9 billion since its inception during the Kennedy administration.

More than 4,400 charities participate in the CFC annually. The 2025 donation cycle raised an estimated $40 million, despite ongoing challenges and weeks of delay due to overlap with last fall’s government shutdown. By comparison, the 2024 campaign amassed close to $70 million in donations from federal employees.

Trump administration officials have expressed reservations about the costs of keeping the program up and running in 2026 and beyond. OPM has said it would be “evaluating changes” for the CFC, and has suggested the possibility of ending the program altogether. Officials raised concerns about low participation and “excessive administrative costs” of the program.

Last August, the Trump administration put the CFC’s annual campaign on a temporary hold, but later opted to run the program for the 2025 cycle. At the time, Kupor said the 2025 CFC would continue “only because many charities have already spent time and money preparing for this over the course of this year.”

In response to questions about the Democrats’ letter, an OPM spokesperson pointed to a September 2025 blog post, which estimated that it cost $22 million in outside contractor fees and listing fees to administer the CFC last year.

“This means for every $1 a federal employee donates, about $0.33 (or 33%) does not reach the charity for which it was intended,” Kupor wrote in the blog post. “And that’s of course before the charities themselves use some of those monies to support their own administrative activities… As a result, if you are a federal employee who donates via the CFC, only 47 cents of every dollar you donate makes it to the intended beneficiary.”

In their letter, however, Democrats pushed back against the administration’s argument that the program is too costly to run, arguing that it “omits crucial facts about the structure and long-term benefits of the CFC.”

The letter states that charities pay fees to participate in the program, which helps mitigate operating costs — and in the long run, the lawmakers argued that the CFC saves hundreds of millions of dollars by collecting donations that may otherwise require federal spending.

“If there are changes OPM can make to further increase the efficiency of the CFC, we encourage you to explore them in consultation with longstanding charity partners,” Democrats wrote. “But a unilateral decision to dismantle the program altogether is not the solution.”

Some organizations participating in the CFC, according to Democrats, have warned that fully terminating the donation program would lead to significant budgetary challenges.

“Many charities rely upon the funds they raise through the CFC to operate,” Democrats wrote. “The loss of such resources would force them to scale back their programming, making it exceedingly difficult for them to meet the needs of the disadvantaged communities they serve.”

Ann Hollingsworth, vice president for government affairs at The Nonprofit Alliance, called CFC’s continuation in 2026 and beyond “essential.”

“The winding down of the CFC is happening in real time, from the OPM office responsible for administering the CFC being effectively shuttered to participating organizations being unable to access records and data they paid for through program participation fees,” Hollingsworth said in an email. “[The letter] reiterated strong support for maintaining the CFC and highlighted the substantial and varied charitable work that comes from such a program.”

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email drew.friedman@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at drewfriedman.11

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