Alleviating nonprofit stress through more reliable city processes

New York City City Hall used “Nonprofit Week” to celebrate the organizations that keep the city running, such as by providing meals for the hungry, social care for the elderly and shelter for the homeless. Various agencies spent last week providing trainings, sharing information on municipal contracts and honoring human service organizations with awards.

The mayor’s office also announced successes regarding nonprofits: registering, or paying, 88% of nonprofit contracts on time for 2026, securing 50% advance payment for many and, lastly, launching a new discretionary grant pilot that will switch contracts of $25,000 or less in City Council discretionary funds to a streamlined grant system for 2026. Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives Ana Almanzar spoke with City & State about these announcements and what they mean for New York nonprofits. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the significance of Thursday’s announcement of the Discretionary Grant Pilot for 2026? 

It’s a reflection of a couple of things. It’s a continuation of the work that we started when we first took office in 2022. The team worked very hard to clear about $6 billion in backlog that was owed to nonprofits by other administrations prior to us taking helm of city government. We were able to clear the backlog, alleviating the pressure of the sector to the tune of $6 billion and then we continue that throughout the last three years and change. Mayor Adams is always pushing us to make sure that we cut red tape and alleviate the pressure for the sector, starting with the creation and staffing of the Mayor’s Office for Nonprofit Services. As well as the work with the City Council, back in 2022, in our discretionary funding and making it a multi-year contract to help both the providers and those who receive those discretionary grants, but also the entire system as a whole. We continued that with our investment that Mayor Adams announced through a great rally in 2023 on the steps of City Hall of the $741 million for the Cost of Living Adjustments that the nonprofit sector had been asking for for quite a while. And this administration delivered on that, touching thousands of nonprofit workers, many of whom are giving their hearts out to provide services for New Yorkers. Then, just last year, maybe earlier this year, we announced the chief nonprofit officers, placing one staff member at each agency to serve as the liaison for our nonprofit contracting with the city. To be the pipeline of communication, so we both understand, one, what the sector needs and, two, highlight the challenges that come up when it comes to contracting and to alleviate the red tape throughout the entire system. 

The work that we’ve done this week highlights all of that progress that we’ve made. This pilot in particular is great work that we’ve done with Speaker Adams’ office and her team. Our constant communication with them to be able to examine the data and see what can be done, and the excitement that we can come up with a strategy that addresses the challenges of our discretionary funding that are $25,000 or less, since they are treated the same as any other contract for a million dollars or more.

What impact is the pilot expected to have on the nonprofits that will be participating?

The process assistance now for $25,000 or less discretionary funding that comes to a nonprofit from a member of the City Council takes the same 13 steps as any other program contracts. As cumbersome as it is, given that we are the custodian of city funding and we have to have some guardrails, this will alleviate those 13 steps, making that grant go directly to the provider with a quick step and very easy processing – alleviating some of the challenges that our vendors face when accessing their discretionary funding, especially since those by nature are from the get-go delayed because they are assigned after the start of the fiscal year. We start at a disadvantage, and that’s why both our city agencies that process the funding as well as the nonprofit, will receive those fundings at a time, could take six months to a year for them to receive it. With this pilot, they’ll be able to receive at a lot faster rate than in the past, and we’re very excited about that. I know that’ll be well received by the sector. This is something that we haven’t done in isolation; like much of the work the Adams administration has done, it’s in conjunction with both the mayor listening to the concerns of the sector and the Council Speaker listening to the challenges the sector was facing. We came together to deliver for our nonprofit services providers, who are the frontline workers as a procurement city to provide for our fellow New Yorkers throughout the city.

It was announced that 88% of the 2026 contracts were registered on time. What can we credit this improvement to? Is it known how soon the remaining 12% will be registered?

It takes a lot of work, and the entire senior leadership here at City Hall and our colleagues throughout the entire system, specifically the Mayor’s Office for Nonprofit Services and the Mayor’s Office for Contracting Services. We come together weekly to examine system-wide strategy that we can implement to alleviate some of that pressure, and that includes how we can accelerate the timing of our processing for our contracts throughout the system. We did two things: Working with specific agencies and their teams, both MOCS and MONS, and looking at the system, to look at different agencies and see which steps can we alleviate, which ones can we accelerate and then implement that to those agencies. That was very helpful. We also worked with our chief efficiency officer and looked at all the systems throughout all the agencies on how we can alleviate the processing time. So, the credit goes to all those teams who have been working diligently to make sure that every single one of those 88% of contracts were registered on time. And on top of that it’s not only the timely registration of these contracts that we are celebrating, but also that many of those contracts will get 50% advances on their contract as soon as the contract is registered. So, they see the work on the system itself, but also the financial relief that the nonprofit sector will receive thanks to the work of many of my colleagues throughout the entire system. It’s a moment of celebration. I am very proud of the work that we have done in this administration in clearing many of the backlog of the challenges of the nonprofits and I am a former staff member of our nonprofit services. I know our nonprofit office. I know what it means for the sector to get all these contracts registered on time, as well as the advances of the 50% for other contracts.

If we consider internal competition, all the agencies want to get to 100% as soon as possible. The world doesn't stop, we continue. We do take a second to celebrate, but we don’t take our foot from the gas, and continue pushing and encouraging our assisted agencies to process those contracts on time. Also we are working … through the Nonprofit Advisory Council to encourage them to help us connect to nonprofits, so they can also help us push those contracts through. So, we celebrate the 80%. We’re very happy about it, but we’re not stopping there. We know that we need to get to 100% and that’s the goal. I don’t have a specific date, but it is a target that we keep looking at to make sure that we can process those quickly and then we can provide advances on those contracts, as well.

Despite the $5 billion in advance contract payments that was announced in spring, the city still owes some nonprofits money. What progress is being made on that front? 

We host conversations quarterly with our Nonprofit Advisory Council, that is a group of nonprofit leaders from many different organizations representing the sector, from education to special needs to our aging population. It is a listening tour, for the most part. We want to hear from them: what is it that you see from not only your own organization, but other organizations that you know about that are facing challenges with our processing time and what can we do. We collect not only the name of the organization, but also the name of the agency that they’re dealing with, and we address those on a one-on-one basis. Then we look at the patterns that we see and how we can address those system-wide in designing strategies to make sure that that number gets to zero. We also work with our colleagues from the City Council, since they have their own pipeline communication with the sector, in getting that information from them. Whenever a nonprofit has a challenge, please email or call me, or call one of my colleagues, to make sure that we address those challenges. We also have a monthly call with our own umbrella groups. Those are the organizations that represent many of the nonprofits throughout the entire ecosystem, and there we encourage them to share the list of organizations if any they have that we can help to triage the challenges. So, we work on the larger system and strategy, but we also work one-on-one with those partners throughout to fix their challenges, if they have any.