There’s been a good deal of strife in the non-profit world these days. Some provide afterschool programming, while others provide culture and arts to kids. Others provide housing, daycare and services for the aging. They have contracts with New York City to provide these services and, although they usually have to wait a while to be reimburse, every four years – when the city comptroller (in this case Brad Lander) is running against the sitting mayor for the top spot, the money for these non-profits seem to miraculously take even longer to be reimbursed. A situation, quite frankly, that might just be intended to make the administration look bad. They blame it on the NYC Office of non-profits, but the comptroller has the influence to make it right.
The bigger organizations can afford it, while the smaller ones struggle, prey and lobby to get paid.
The challenges many of these small non-profits mainly face is that they operate on a shoestring and they pay staffers to provide services, only to have to wait a long, long time to be reimbursed by the city. Most don’t have the reserves to pay their staff on time, so they have to borrow and pay interest while they wait for reimbursement, which comes many months after they pay their staffers. This MO makes working in this industry insecure and these are they front line workers in servicing those most in need. We say no more.
