Celebrating $2 Million in Grants to Our Affiliates Across NYC
This past year, Hope for New York celebrated 25 years of doing justice and loving mercy in New York City. We also launched our 10-year vision to see a citywide movement of mercy and justice for our neighbors in need—to see even more non-profits and local churches engaged in demonstrating Christ’s love in practical acts of compassion.
By 2027, we want to grow to 90 non-profit affiliate partners, but we also want to work toward strengthening and growing engagement at our current affiliates. To get there, over the next 10 years, we need to expand—our investments, our partnerships, our reach. And this year was definitely one of growth for Hope for New York!
We’re so excited to announce that this year, we’re investing more than $2 million in funding to our non-profit affiliates. That’s our highest grant distribution to date! It includes $1.79 million in direct grants, which fund existing affiliate programs (like soup kitchens, mentoring, and job readiness training), $75,000 in capacity building grants, which fund consulting and training to increase the effectiveness of our affiliates, and almost $200,000 in volunteer impact grants, which empower our volunteers to creatively support affiliates with funding for supplies and activities.
So why are we expanding our investment in our affiliates by 16 percent over last year? Here are a few of the trends we’re seeing that have led us to increase our overall funding:
1. Funding a growing number of emerging organizations and programs with growing budgets, programs, and impact.
We want to support this growth and build into our affiliates’ organizational and program sustainability. This past year, we added two new organizations to our grant-receiving affiliates: Do for One (which provides relational network and support for people with disabilities) and Safe Families for Children (which provides an alternative to the foster care system and support for families in crisis).
We also provided increased seed funding for new programming at existing affiliates, like the New York City Rescue Mission’s workforce programming through the Thrive Initiative and A House on Beekman’s new middle school program, which is set to kick off this year, and seed funding for new organizations, like Expect Hope, which is preparing to launch residential programming in the Bronx for expectant moms in January.
2. Funding collaborative initiatives to leverage resources so our affiliates can have a greater impact in their programming.
Our funding also increasingly supports collaborative projects between organizations—for example, at The Open Door, Open Hands Legal Services, and Restore NYC, where we’re supporting joint initiatives to help recent immigrants and trafficked individuals navigate legal issues, language barriers, and cultural divides as they orient themselves to life in New York City.
We have also increased support for Don’t Walk By/Rescue Alliance, a network of organizations working together to leverage volunteers, staff, transportation, shelter beds, addiction recovery programs, and local church networks to catalyze resources and life-transformation support for people experiencing homelessness.
3. Increased HFNY stakeholder engagement in directing HFNY grant funding to our affiliates.
Since its founding in 2015, members of our Community Grants Circle—a group of 40 committed HFNY donors, volunteers, and church partner staff—have been involved in reviewing grant applications, conducting site visits, and providing grant funding recommendations to the HFNY staff and Board.
This year, given their thorough due diligence process, we wanted to give the CGC the chance to nominate the organization they felt was most deserving of an additional $10,000 grant, given on top of the direct grants we award. Ultimately the CGC voted to award our first-ever $10,000 Community Investment Award to the Downtown nominee, Brooklyn Arab American Friendship Center, for their work with the Arab American immigrant community in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.