Earlier this month, the U.S. Treasury took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two mortgage lending giants that had been financially imperiled by the subprime lending crisis. Government control of these two institutions immediately sent shockwaves throughout the country’s financial system and foreshadowed several weeks of meltdowns on Wall Street.

But the fallout from the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac isn’t just a Wall Street problem. The collapse of these two companies poses a serious threat to many local organizations in Northern Virginia.

Freddie Mac’s philanthropic arm, the Freddie Mac Foundation, was the largest corporate funder of non-profit organizations in the Washington D.C. region. Last year, the foundation gave approximately $25 million to local non-profits.

Now, many of those organizations that had received large parts of their operating budgets from Freddie Mac in previous years are facing uncertainty.

"At this point, I don’t know," Diane Charles responded when asked if her group, Stop Child Abuse Now, or SCAN, would continue to receive funding from Freddie Mac. "I don’t think anybody does."

Shawn Flaherty, a Freddie Mac Foundation spokesperson, said that all of the foundation’s charitable donations are currently under review by the organization’s director, James Lockhart. No decisions have been made yet about whether funding will be cut, she said, and there was no timeline for when these decisions will be made. "We really don’t know at this point," she said. "It’s under review and we haven’t made a decision yet."

A non-profite child abuse prevention group based out of Alexandria, SCAN has had a relationship with the Freddie Mac Foundation for more than a decade, Charles, the group’s executive director, said. In that time, they have contributed between $25,000 and $50,000 to SCAN per year, funding that represents approximately five percent of their annual budget.

Charles said that if Freddie Mac cut off its funding to SCAN, it would be very difficult for her organization to find the funding elsewhere. "We’ll be really disappointed," she said. "That’s an important piece of what [Freddie Mac has] done in the community … Relatively, it’s a very small amount but that kind of funding allows us to leverage lots of other funding and volunteers. To us, it’s critical."

Elizabeth Page is the director of the Falls Church-McLean Children’s Center, a group that provides childcare to low-income families. For the last decade, the Freddie Mac Foundation has given Page’s group $25,000 a year, one-eighth of their annual operating budget.

"We’re nervous," Page said. "Not just with Freddie Mac but with the whole environment these days. Whenever there’s an economic downturn a lot of non-profits suffer."

The Falls Church-McLean Children’s Center received its funding from Freddie Mac in July, Page said, so they are covered for this fiscal year. "I’m hoping by April when we reapply [for funding] things will be clearer," she said. But Page said that if the funding from Freddie Mac doesn’t come through, they would most likely have to layoff one of their teaching assistants.

Loundoun County-based INMED Partnerships for Children is another local non-profit organization that relies heavily on funding from Freddie Mac. Thirty five percent of their annual budget – $175,000 per year for a trio human services programs – comes from the Freddie Mac Foundation.

Linda Pfeiffer, INMED’s President and CEO, said that her organization has been in close contact with Freddie Mac representatives since their recent financial changes and that "there is no indication" that their funding is in jeopardy. In fact, Pfeiffer said, just a few weeks ago INMED was invited by Freddic Mac to officially reapply for a $100,000 grant.

"The people at the Foundation are completely forthcoming," she said. "As far as they know things are moving ahead as normal."

But Pfeiffer said that the loss of funding from Freddic Mac would force INMED to "cut down on our services dramatically" because the loss of the Freddie Mac funds could trigger a chain reaction among their other funders.

"It’s something that’s always been crucial for leveraging other funding," she said. "All funders like to see that their funds are being matched by other funding. Freddie Mac has always been wonderful to provide the upfront money that we can use to get state money and county money."

The fallout from the collapse of Freddie Mac is affecting Northern Virginia non-profits both large and small.

BU-GATA is an Arlington-based group that acts as an advocate for the tenants of the Buckingham Village neighborhood. Since 1998, it has run a youth program for Buckingham teens that was funded with a $40,000 annual contribution from Freddie Mac.

If the Freddie Mac funds were cut off, BU-GATA would have to fire the program’s full-time coordinator and would be forced to use part-time volunteers, Lois Athey, the group’s executive director, said.

Northern Virginia Family Service is on the opposite end of the funding spectrum. They have an annual budget of more than $20 million, only $400,000 of which comes from Freddie Mac. Like BU-GATA, Northern Virginia Family Service would have to make layoffs if their Freddie Mac funding was cut off, the organization’s President and CEO Mary Agee said.

But if the Freddie Mac Foundation ceases to exist, a lack of funding wouldn’t be the only thing that local non-profits would lose out on.

"[Freddie Mac goes] above and beyond just the financial giving," Agee said. "Their staff is involved in working in the community to help build the systems that will improve people’s lives. They are in the community rolling up their sleeves side by side with all of us to resolve community issues. We need that. We need their perspectives. It sets them apart from a lot of other foundations."