Mayor Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin on Thursday announced a new effort to chip away at the chronic delays in city payments to nonprofit organizations.
Around 800 additional nonprofits will now get to partake in a program providing direct grant agreements for nonprofits receiving $25,000 or less from the city — allowing them to skip onerous steps in the city’s discretionary contract process.
The nonprofits will receive the funding within 30 days of signing the grant agreement, according to the mayor’s office.
The effort is an expansion of an already-existing program started under ex-Mayor Adams called the Discretionary Grant Pilot.
“No matter how small the grant may be, for years, nonprofits have been treated as if they are entering into a large contract with the city,” Mamdani said at a press conference Wednesday morning. “As a result, they have been forced to fill out mountains of documents and endure months of delays. This one-size-fits-all system creates a huge backlog for our city, and often forces nonprofits to wait for more than a year to access funds that they’ve already been promised.”
Around 100 nonprofits participated in the first round of the pilot program when it was launched last fall, the mayor said, and they received their awards in less than 90 days.
“They won’t have to wait years for funding that they’re owed,” Menin said at the announcement, which was her first appearance with the mayor in months. “Instead, not-for-profits can direct their energy on the mission that drives their operations, rather than whether they can operate at all. City agencies can be more efficient in their efforts to improve the lives of New Yorkers.”