Brooklyn Paper: Brooklyn nonprofits brace for uncertainty after federal funding freeze and swift reversal causes ‘chaos’

Published in: Brooklyn Paper

A federal funding freeze and a swift reversal recently left organizations scrambling. Now, Brooklyn nonprofits are bracing for a year of uncertain investment under the Trump administration.

Late last month, the  Office of Management and Budget announced a freeze on all federal grants and loan payments. The office planned to review organizations’ spending to ensure it aligned with newly-signed executive orders.

“Immediately, I was really fearful for all of the needs of Brooklyn,” said Jocelynne Rainey, president and CEO of Brooklyn Org. “ There are people that are surviving every day that truly need the services that these nonprofits provide.”

Brooklyn Org, which bills itself as an “advocate for Brooklyn’s nonprofit community,” works directly with donors and grant programs to support funding goals. On the morning of the announcement, Rainey received a flood of emails from nonprofit board members seeking to understand how they would be affected by the freeze.

Two days later, OMB issued a two-sentence memo retracting the federal funding pause, but not before causing widespread confusion for schools, nonprofit organizations, and other groups that rely on federal funding for their daily operations.

The mandate and its quick reversal made clear just how easy it is to disrupt these programs’ daily operations. Nonprofits were left wondering what would happen next with the federal funding they rely on.

In a joint statement,  Speaker Adrienne Adams and Finance Chair Justin Brannan criticized the Trump administration’s decision to freeze funding as “intentionally cruel and incompetent.”

While it was in effect, the freeze “disrupted Medicaid and early childhood education, while threatening food assistance and other services for Americans,” they said, and created “chaos.”

“Chaos is exactly what happened, and it feels like terrorism,” Rainey told Brooklyn Paper. “Because it’s like one thing after another that is impacting the most vulnerable people in our city.”

Brooklyn is the most populous borough in the New York metro area, but according to Brooklyn Org, only 8% of the city’s philanthropic dollars go to Kings County nonprofits.

In response to the freeze, the Council announced the Protect NYC Families initiative, a $2 million investment for 60 local nonprofits to provide more legal services, “rapid response” efforts, community trainings, and helplines. Several Brooklyn nonprofits, including the Arab American Association of New York, Boro Park Jewish Community Council, and United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg received $30,000 grants through the program.

“I feel like many of us don’t understand how much federal, state, and city funding is actually keeping these nonprofits afloat,” Rainey said. “And how much every single dollar is needed.”

Brooklyn Org is skilled at finding ways to fill funding gaps left by state and federal programs. In 2023 alone, it secured $21.1 million in grants for local nonprofits. However, Rainey is concerned that significant cuts to federal funding will exceed what the local community can raise to keep nonprofits running at full capacity.

“We are evaluating the directive,” shared a spokesperson from the mayor’s office in response to Brooklyn Paper’s request for comment on how the office is preparing for decreased federal funding to nonprofits.

Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to continue working with Attorney General Letitia James to fight against “federal executive order that attempted to halt grant funding and other aid for nonprofits across the country,” shared a spokesperson for the governor’s office with Brooklyn Paper.

Similar to Brooklyn Org., the Bedford Stuyvesant Early Childhood Development Center is assessing its future funding needs. Angela Terry, the executive director of ECDC, was not initially worried about the federal funding freeze — until her team was unable to access their payment management system.

The preschool currently serves 350 families at its six locations in Bed-Stuy, focusing on low-income households.

“That definitely put a panic in everyone,” Terry told Brooklyn Paper. “We realized we weren’t able to draw down any funding [and] we needed to make payroll.”

The school regained access to its payment system after the funding freeze was reversed. Payments were only slightly delayed, posting as “pending” for 72 hours instead of the usual 48 hours.

Leaders at the preschool, which Terry said already operates with “constricted funding,” has started to look for other funding options. They are considering local fundraisers and may hire a grant writer to supplement the funding they expect will be unavailable in the future.

“The impact will be just tremendous,” Terry said. “It will affect the parents that work every day who depend on us to bring their children to a safe place. It will affect the staff, and their families, and their livelihood.”

The Women in Need shelter is also preparing for the impact of funding cuts on both its staff and the communities it serves.

Following the funding announcement, Henry Love, vice president of public policy and strategy at WIN, questioned how rent would be paid. The shelter system serves about 7,000 people a night across New York City, including around 3,500 children. Most of those people are in Brooklyn, where WIN has its largest hub.

“[The pause] did exactly what it was designed to do, which was to cause complete and utter chaos around the vagueness of it,” Love said.

WIN has been preparing for the future of government-funded social programs under the new Trump administration, particularly those that support immigrants and BIPOC communities.

Cuts to SNAP benefits, Section 8 housing vouchers, and Medicaid are all vital programs for the communities that rely on WIN shelters, Love said. If or when these programs face reduced federal funding, the shelter system will not have the resources to meet the growing needs of its residents.

“One of the big things for the folks who put on Project 2025 is that they really want to dismantle the nonprofit industry because they see us as a pillar of the left,” Love said. “So there’s a real, rigorous battle underway to not only attack the nonprofit industry but also attack just social welfare programs as a whole.”

In early February, the U.S. Senate confirmed Russell Vought as the White House’s budget director for the OMB, the same department that issued the mandate for the funding freeze. Vought is one of the architects of the controversial Project 2025, which proposes a clampdown on government spending and increased immigration enforcement.

WIN is taking the Trump administration’s campaign promises at face value, Love said, and is actively organizing to protect vulnerable communities in the city.

The organization recently launched “Project Hope,” a 180-day action plan aimed at pushing local lawmakers to expand sanctuary protections for immigrants, prevent local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, and repeal a 30-60-day shelter limit.

“Let’s not wait to see what they’re just to do and how bad it will be. We don’t need to hypothesize what we know,” Love said. “Let’s get ahead of it, and let’s protect our families from what we know is coming down the line.”