In a new report, the council has called on the ACT government to create a contingency fund "up to the low millions" to support the community sector through "a torrent of change ... like no other in living memory", and to cover gaps created by funding shifts under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

The council's director, Susan Helyar, said growth in demand for services over the past decade had not been matched by a growth in funding, meaning not-for-profit groups and community providers were now forced to do more with less.

Of the 401 organisations operating in the ACT, Ms Helyar said two thirds reported funding levels weren't enough to meet demand.

While the ACT government had already done a lot to help the sector, services continued to struggle, she said. The council recommended a "proper stocktake" to arrive at a hard figure for the bail-out money, which could be used to ensure essential services continued.

"There's been some growth in funding over time but it's nowhere near the 11 per cent growth in population," Ms Helyar said.

"Now, when funding comes up for renewal, [there's] an explicit requirement 'We want to know what more you can do with the same amount of money'."

The council's report was presented to Community Services Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith, who has been contacted for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Community Services Directorate said it was considering the report, and would respond to the council early this week.

The government has previously negotiated extensions in transition funding for a number of providers who missed out on NDIS grants. That included a last-minute $70,000 sum for Self Help Organisations United Together (SHOUT) earlier in the year.

For almost four decades, SHOUT has provided low-cost infrastructure and administrative support to community organisations but this year the not-for-profit, along with the 40 or so organisations it supports, found itself in danger of closing under NDIS funding changes.

SHOUT chair Rebecca Davey said the money, which ran out in June next year, had been "life-saving". SHOUT had even grown from about 40 organisations to 50.

"They were dropping off, they were so scared, so now it's all hanging on the next six months when the funding ends," Ms Davey said.

While things were looking up, she said organisations were still stuck under the shadow of further cuts, making planning for the future next to impossible.

"We have less staff on the ground now, we've reduced our full-time staff member down to part-time so the organisations we support have to do more of the admin work we'd previously done for them so they could get on with helping people," she said.

"Volunteers are having to carry more of the workload or they're having to cut down a little bit on what they do."

Ms Davey said a big risk was volunteer burnout. Every year, fewer people put their hand up to help out, and the majority of volunteers were elderly.

ACT Shelter executive officer Travis Gilbert said the housing and homelessness sector had lost more than $2 million in Commonwealth funding in recent years due to population fluctuations.

ACT Shelter lost a policy officer and could no longer conduct research as a result, Mr Gilbert said, and women's refuges had fared even worse.

He noted the commitment of the ACT government to housing but said a contingency fund would help plug gaps such as support for people with a disability who are experiencing homelessness and children in out of home care leaving the system.

At ACTCOSS, Ms Helyar said the council had sounded the alarm on critical gaps in the territory's social services sector more than five years ago, and organisations were frustrated that governments of all jurisdictions rarely stepped in to help before crisis point.

Ms Davey, who also runs the Arthritis Foundation of the ACT, said funding had become less flexible over the years.

"At Arthritis, there are so many more things we could be doing but there's really strict contracts from both the ACT and Commonwealth that say you will do A, B and C, and often you don't even get funded well enough to do [that] so you're constantly fundraising just to deliver your contract," she said.

Ms Davey said a contingency fund to give other organisations a similar bail-out to SHOUT was a good idea, but she was wary of it becoming a "battle" between organisations in need.

"We as a sector need to link in more together and look out for each other as well as the community," she said.

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