You wouldn’t tolerate paying firefighters a year after they put out a fire, so why do we let essential nonprofits twist in the wind?

Dear New Yorkers,

Imagine for a second if, after picking up all the garbage on their routes, that sanitation workers had to wait over a year to get paid. What if firefighters had to wait 13 months for a paycheck—all while being expected to put out fires every single day?

That’s exactly what is happening to nonprofits that contract with the City right now—many do equally critical work that our city would not be able to function without.

Nonprofits provide meals to the hungry, socialization for seniors during a very lonely time, youth employment during a jobs crisis, after school programs that support our students, eviction defense as we face a housing crisis, and critical community safety initiatives like the Cure Violence program that are needed as we face public safety challenges. Nonprofits stepped up to fill the holes in our social safety net as the pandemic hit NYC and continue to do so every single day, yet it takes months for them to get paid by the city for the work they were contracted to do on behalf of New Yorkers.

So, what are we going to do about it? We teamed up with the Adams Administration starting back in December to convene a joint taskforce of nonprofit and agency leaders to tackle the obstacles facing nonprofits. This Monday, on Valentine’s Day, we gathered to release our recommendations for how NYC can show some love to nonprofits by getting them paid on time.

Watch the video to learn more about the work nonprofits do for New Yorkers and how we are working to improve the nonprofit contracting process below:

[link removed]

Here are some of the highlights from our taskforce’s recommendations:
* Accountability and Transparency: Create new systems that both hold city stakeholders accountable for timely procurement and contracting and increase transparency to nonprofit providers and the public, including creating Contract-stat–a public data dashboard similar to Compstat.
* Streamline and Modernize: Reduce inefficiencies and delays in the procurement and contracting process with improved and expanded adoption of the PASSPort digital procurement system across agencies.
* Fairness and Equality: Lower the burden incurred by smaller, primarily BIPOC-led nonprofits when contracting with the City, including increasing the Returnable Grant Fund and rewriting the standard human services contract to acknowledge cost escalations, like cost-of-living adjustments, that would increase the original cost of these vital services contracts without the need for amendments.
* Leadership and Management Practices: Establish leadership and management practices at the highest levels of city government, including the new Mayor’s Office of Nonprofits, with input from nonprofit organizations.
* Capacity Building: Strengthen the capacity of nonprofit organization’s administrative and contracting capabilities through training and technical assistance to support nonprofits

You can read the full report here ([link removed]) .

It’s long past time to get nonprofits paid, and I look forward to continuing to work alongside the Adams Administration to help make that vision a reality.

Onwards,

Brad

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