With contract sunsetting, parenting nonprofit implores Mamdani administration to renew funding

A New York City nonprofit focused on building stronger relationships between parents and children has been left scrambling after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration declined to renew its funding.

Power of Two’s $1.5 million contract with the city’s Administration for Children’s Services ends Wednesday, clouding the future of the small community-based organization that’s served vulnerable families across the city since 2015. With roughly 65% of the nonprofit’s funding coming from the city, its leaders say the loss would strike a major blow to the in-home coaching it provides to families who’ve experienced trauma, are at risk of depression or facing other challenges.

“This is really bittersweet and painful,” Power of Two Executive Director Coleen Stevens Porcher said, referencing the looming end of city funding. “From the very beginning, what we wanted to do was be preventative.”

City Council Member Mercedes Narcisse told City & State that she hopes the Mamdani administration renews the organization’s contract, touting its efforts to help new mothers build strong bonds with their babies, reduce parental depression and improve parental confidence. 

“As a mom and a nurse, I know how much the first months and years shape a child’s health and a mother’s well-being,” Narcisse said. “Programs doing this work on the ground, like Power of Two, especially in traditionally underserved neighborhoods, deserve support.”

Along with Narcisse, Council Members Althea Stevens and Rita Joseph have also pushed the Mamdani administration to renew the organization’s funding.  

While the decision to sunset the organization’s contract occurred in the waning days of the Adams administration last year, Stevens Porcher said she and others within Power of Two have been trying to meet with Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Deputy Mayor Helen Arteaga since January to make the case for a renewed commitment – and more recently, to argue the contract should be moved under the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Though they’ve spoken with staff, efforts to have a substantive conversation with the deputy mayor directly have largely been fruitless, according to Stevens Porcher. She said they did get on a call with Arteaga in June, but it lasted only a few minutes. 

Sneha Choudhary, deputy press secretary for the mayor, said that this was not a budget cut.“It was a decision made more than a year ago to move away from this type of primary prevention program as part of ACS’ continuum of services,” Choudhary said in a statement. “ACS and Power of Two agreed to a one-year renewal last year, and Power of Two has been aware since that renewal that we did not have the resources to continue this particular service. Our commitment to supporting children and caregivers remains as strong as ever.”

She added that the Mamdani administration will “continue to be a supportive partner” to Power of Two, referring clients through the city’s coordinated intake and referral system. “If an opportunity to fund this scope of work becomes available in the future, we would welcome an application from Power of Two.” But referrals would come on a case-by-case basis, rather than the lump sum support the organization has received up until this point.

The organization has been through funding crises before – the Adams administration cut funding for the program by $1.5 million in 2024, but it’s not been zeroed out before.

Given the overlap between Mamdani’s priorities and the organization’s own when it comes to racial equity, social justice and getting more children enrolled in early childhood education, Stevens Porcher said she doesn’t understand the decision. The organization deploys its team of coaches to families’ homes where they help parents with their parenting using a program known as Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up. This programming, she said, helps reduce child welfare interventions and readies children for early childhood education by supporting their social, emotional and biological development. 

Both a recent report published by the city’s Commission on Gender Equity and the racial equity plan published by the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice emphasized the importance of the city investing in more organizations that are led by Black and brown New Yorkers, and those that predominantly serve Black and brown New Yorkers. Power of Two meets both of these things, according to Stevens Porcher, who is Black.

“We need more programs like this. We’re trusted in the community and that trust is hard to build. When you take that away, it takes a long time to start back up,” Stevens Porcher said. “It means that the city would have wasted all that investment that they made that helps support the child care infrastructure they are trying to build.”