Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here in Bushwick alongside friends, nonprofit leaders and partners in government. I want to acknowledge we have leaders both inside and outside of City government here with us today. We have Speaker Julie Menin. We have Council Member Lincoln Restler, City Council Member Linda Lee and the in-district representative of this Council district, City Council Member Sandy Nurse.
We also have leaders from within the administration, our deputy mayor for Health and Human Services, Dr. Helen Arteaga; our Mayor's Office of Nonprofit Services executive director, Annie Minguez; our Mayor's Office of Contract Services director, Kim Yu; and I also just want to give a special shoutout to the Bushwick Starr. If we can have a round of applause for the Bushwick Starr. Truly. And for Noel Allain, co-founder and artistic director, and all of the nonprofit organizations who are gathered here today, what you do, helps to make this city so special for all those who call it home, and we can't thank you enough, truly.
Now, our city has long been fascinated by those who go fast. In October of 1904, New Yorkers took the very first ride on a subway, sitting in awe as they shot underground across our city. In 1969, we watched in wonder as our country won the race to the moon, only slightly resentful that Buzz Aldrin had grown up across the river in New Jersey. And half a century later, we leapt to our feet on Randall's Island as Usain Bolt broke the world record for the 100-meter dash at Icahn Stadium.
Today, we add one more groundbreaking chapter to that story of speed as we celebrate a new feat of civic agility: expedited discretionary grant funding.
I'm proud to announce that together with the City Council, City Hall is expanding a pilot program from last year that will make it easier and faster for nonprofit organizations to access the money that they are awarded.
And while this has not yet been described as one giant leap for mankind, it is certainly one not-so-small step toward cutting unnecessary red tape, making City government more efficient and supporting the nonprofits that enrich our communities every day.
Here's how this will work. Every year, thousands of nonprofit organizations receive discretionary funds from the City Council. Many of the awards they receive can be as small as $5,000, the little bit they need to keep vital programs running.
But 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, like those needed to construct a new municipal building or provide an extensive service across the five boroughs.
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, all while they are already struggling to make ends meet on razor-thin budgets.
The discretionary grant pilot seeks to solve that. By cutting out nine steps from the traditional contracting process, it will treat nonprofit discretionary funding of less than $25,000 as what it actually is: a grant, not a contract. And it will allow City government to dispense funds in a fraction of the time.
When the first iteration of this pilot was launched last fall, more than 100 organizations participated and received their awards in fewer than 90 days. That is nine months faster than the traditional wait time for discretionary funds.
Now, with the expansion of this pilot, up to 800 nonprofits will stand to benefit. That means they can spend less time tracking deadlines and filing paperwork and more time providing essential services to our communities.
The Parodneck Foundation can skip the tax affirmation documents and focus on helping low-income New Yorkers access the housing resources they need. Bronx Giants can stop filling out lobbying certification forms and keep teaching football, cheerleading and the skills needed to succeed on and off the field. And Bushwick Starr can spend less time on agency self-registration and more acting and writing with the men and women of Palmetto Garden Senior Club.
In the coming weeks, City Hall will notify the 800 qualifying nonprofits that they are eligible for this pilot. After a much simpler clearance process, one that City government hopes will help these organizations navigate, they can expect to start receiving their payments come winter.
This expansion reflects the call of nonprofit leaders who spoke up during our Commission on Government Efficiency hearings. It represents one critical step in the work of getting nonprofits the funding they need when they need it. And it is a step that we will continue to build upon in the years to come.
It will be felt across our city. It will be felt in every neighborhood, in every difference that nonprofit organizations and their workers make every single day. In food pantries that feed the hungry. In after-school programs that enrich our children's lives. In the arts and culture that is the beating heart of our city. Today we are standing together to support our nonprofit partners in the work of building a better, more livable, more beautiful New York. And making sure that when it comes to streamlining City government and delivering services to New Yorkers, no one has to wait.
And Usain Bolt, in case you are tuning in for this press conference on discretionary grant timelines, we would love to have you as our spokesperson. Please let me know. Thank you. Now I will be serving dual duty as also the emcee for today. So, with that, I would like to introduce the speaker of the City Council, Julie Menin.
Council Speaker Julie Menin: Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor, for this announcement, and I want to first of all thank my City Council colleagues, our finance chair, Council Member Linda Lee; Council Member Sandy Nurse, whose district we're in; Council Member Lincoln Restler, who is our Contracts Chair.
So, as the mayor said, our city's not-for-profits are literally lifelines for our communities. And today we are here to talk about the smallest ones. The nonprofits where residents can walk into the office, and a staff member knows their name and can tell how they're feeling. The not-for-profit where the employees have seen children go from toddlers to teenagers and help them reach their full potential along the way, where just one visit can make a huge difference, whether that's because it helps New Yorkers access medical treatment or legal assistance, or it means they can locate affordable housing that they can actually afford to live in.
Each year in the budget, we allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding to organizations like these. Our Council members know their communities inside and out. They know where the funding would make the most impact, and then they allocate it to those organizations. And they help all 51 of our districts thrive, ensuring that our residents can access the key services right in their neighborhoods.
But too many not-for-profit organizations have not been receiving their funding on a reasonable timeline. This is not funding that they hoped for blindly, nor is it funding that they can do without. This is funding they need to literally keep the lights on and get their employees paid. And it's funding they were promised. And let's be clear: Promised by us, the City of New York.
Last year, the city had a solution. Together with the past mayoral administration, the City Council announced a pilot program for around 100 not-for-profits to receive one-year grants instead of slogging through the arduous reimbursement process. These not-for-profits qualified if they were awarded less than $25,000 from certain city agencies. And the pilot replaced the traditional contract process, allowing these organizations to receive their Council-allocated funds up front and in nearly a quarter of the time.
Now, we are proud to announce we are expanding this pilot by eight times, meaning up to 800 not-for-profits will receive 100 percent of their funding up front. And that's funding they'll receive within just 30 days of signing the grant agreement with the relevant City agency.
This streamlined process eliminates over half a dozen steps of the bureaucratic odyssey that previously burdened providers, and it saves also City agencies from processing mountains and mountains of official documents in comparison. Contracting paperwork makes grant paperwork, quite frankly, look tiny.
We all know that the focus of not-for-profits and our City agencies alike should not be on paperwork but rather on the people that they serve. And that is what we are making possible today.
Now, not-for-profits won't have to take out loans just to pay the rent. They won't have to wait years for funding that they're owed. Instead, not-for-profits can direct their energy on the mission that drives their operations rather than whether they can operate at all.
