The New York Community Trust Awards $6.7 Million In Grants To 37 Nonprofits From Harlem To Hollis

The city’s community foundation has just announced $6.7 million in grants to 37 nonprofits.

As we face the continued challenges brought on by the pandemic, New York Community Trust grants are targeting a range of relief areas, from helping job seekers begin fulfilling careers to training more healthcare workers.

Grantees are also working on other fronts to improve the lives of New Yorkers, including protecting the environment, promoting civic engagement, expanding access to healthcare, and improving housing.

“As the city continues to struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Shawn Morehead, The Trust’s vice president for grants. “The Trust continues to meet the needs of those hardest hit, including those out of work, trying to find mental health services, or coping with domestic violence.”

Full descriptions of each grant are available upon request.

Jobs and Workforce Development

New York City has regained nearly half of the one million jobs lost in the food, hospitality, and retail sectors during the pandemic, leaving many New Yorkers looking for jobs—including alternatives to the low-wage jobs they used to rely on. Trust grants are helping the City University of New York create and operate the NYC Accelerated Workforce Recovery Hub, where the continuing education divisions of two community colleges will fill the gap in providing workforce training and career placement opportunities for job seekers.

City University of New York: Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College Foundation; and Fiorello H. LaGuardia Community College Foundation: $1,653,000 to help the city’s community colleges prepare unemployed New Yorkers for good jobs in high-demand sectors.

New York City Workforce Development Fund: $250,000 to this funder collaborative for grantmaking to improve the city’s workforce capacity and career development system.

Helping Immigrants

Legal Aid Society: $200,000 to protect the rights of immigrant New Yorkers transferred to distant, out-of-state detention centers. The Society will document access-to-counsel problems, challenge unjust detention conditions in court, and represent clients where the government argues that the applicable law changed based on the location of their detention.

Make the Road New York: $275,000 to advocate for the replenishment of the New York State Excluded Workers Fund, which provided payments for workers who were laid off due to COVID-19 and weren’t eligible for unemployment insurance because of their immigration status. The group also will study the feasibility of an unemployment insurance program for undocumented workers, so that support is available at all times.

Safe Passage Project: $125,000 to identify ways to reduce children’s trauma and anxiety during deportation proceedings—especially as the number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the border this year may be at a record level.

Sakhi for South Asian Women: $100,000 to support South Asian survivors of domestic violence, who often hesitate to reach out for help due to isolation, fears of deportation, unfamiliarity with their rights, and language barriers. Sakhi will expand its capacity to provide legal and translation services to domestic violence survivors.

Engaging Voters

Citizens Union Foundation of the City of New York: $150,000 to monitor, inform, and evaluate the redistricting commission and its process of drawing new district lines for the City Council. It will seek to foster greater accountability, accessibility, and transparency of this government process.

Dominicanos USA: $90,000 to encourage voter registration, education, and engagement in the 2022 elections among young Latinx New Yorkers. The nonprofit will recruit civic ambassadors and conduct a bilingual voter outreach campaign to help voters navigate an election that will have many races, new procedures, and new district lines.

Improving Health

Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Providers of New York State: $250,000 to coordinate substance use, mental health, and physical health services across the state. The group will develop integrated services across its 100 member providers and help state officials develop a single license to streamline the caregiving process.

Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health: $125,000 to study the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adults’ mental health and wellbeing in Harlem. Researchers will enroll additional Asian American participants, who were under-represented in an initial study, and make recommendations on how to better support older adults.

Coordinated Behavioral Care: $200,000 to help mental health clinics gather and use more complete patient information to provide better treatment for people with both physical and mental illnesses. The group will connect its data portal to clinical systems, train providers to use the portal, and help connect patients to primary care providers.

1199SEIU Training and Employment Funds: $200,000 to attract, train, and retain more skilled home health aides by developing a new payment and support model for these workers. It will analyze the impact of converting hourly wages to an annual salary, study ways to reduce turnover, increase advancement opportunities, and update a training curriculum.

New York Birth Control Access Project: $100,000 for an advocacy campaign to increase access to birth control by passing legislation that will allow pharmacists to prescribe birth control medications.

Aiding Education & Youth

Advocates for Children of New York: $140,000 to advocate for the city’s Department of Education to adopt proven methods for literacy instruction and to offer effective interventions for struggling young readers. The nonprofit will meet with local officials to raise awareness about poor reading proficiency rates and ensure new school curricula use the latest science-backed methods.

Appalachian Early Childhood Network: $75,000 to address the severe shortage of home-based childcare services in Kentucky. The Network will recruit and train new residential childcare providers, as well as provide funding and supplies to existing providers.

Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York: $220,000 to secure mental health services for New York’s children and teens. The group will advocate for adequate financing for mental health services, especially in communities most affected by the pandemic, and press for more affordable and accessible care.

The Center for New York City Affairs at The New School: $50,000 to help Spanish-speaking families navigate schools reopening for full time, in-person learning, including understanding COVID-19 safety procedures and how to access services for students with special needs.

Community Food Advocates: $130,000 to address school food issues arising from the pandemic and to improve school meal programs. The group will reassemble the successful free school lunch campaign coalition and advocate for expanded access to healthy and diverse cafeteria offerings.

Exalt Youth: $101,000 to expand its internship program that places young people with histories of arrest or incarceration in eight-week paid internships.

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility: $100,000 to help teachers build students’ social and emotional skills to address pandemic-related student needs in Harlem. The Center will complete revisions to its K-8 school curricula and provide training for teachers on the new curricula.

New Visions for Public Schools: $200,000 to train the city’s educators to use a new school system-wide data portal to make informed decisions about teaching instruction, individual student needs, and school operations. It will create resources, provide coaching, and develop a self-help tool so that teachers can fully use the portal.

New York Botanical Garden: $160,000 to involve young people from the Bronx in urban farming as a way to address inadequate access to fresh produce and to get them involved in leadership roles in their community.

SERP Institute: $255,000 to finish the evaluation of a program for struggling middle school readers that uses class discussions to engage students in critical thinking about engaging topics, such as the Harlem Renaissance, immigration, and September 11th—as opposed to more common remedial materials that students often find boring or degrading.

Improving Housing

Citizens Housing and Planning Council of New York: $121,000 to evaluate strategies for converting illegal basement apartments into safe, legal living spaces.

Healthy Building Network: $80,000 to encourage the use of healthier building materials in affordable housing. The Network will develop an accredited curriculum about the relationship among buildings, toxic chemicals, and public health.

Heat Seek NYC: $40,000 to coordinate the installation of heat sensors so that low-income tenants can gather home temperature data to verify heating lapses in Housing Court cases and allow organizers to more effectively advocate for improved housing conditions.

Neighborhood Housing Services of Queens CDC: $75,000 to help low-income homeowners in flood-prone areas of Queens recover from Hurricane Ida and prepare for future flooding. The group will conduct workshops on flood insurance policies and arrange home audits for low-income homeowners to assess flood risk and provide recommendations.

Responding to Climate Change, Protecting the Environment

Brooklyn Greenway Initiative: $95,000 to complete a study that will inform the development of the 26-mile Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. It will provide better information about gaps and barriers to access for lower income neighborhoods to encourage more equitable use of the Greenway as the project advances.

Clean Energy Group: $150,000 to replace fossil-fuel power plants, known as “peaker plants,” that are used to meet the city’s peak energy demand with cleaner alternatives.

Environmental Grantmakers Association: $84,000 to support fellowships for graduate students of color in leading environmental organizations. The association will place more than 30 fellows into nonprofits and foundations focused on environmental policy and advocacy.

Just Transition Fund: $120,000 to promote clean energy in communities affected by the decline of the coal industry. It will provide funding and technical assistance to those facing the economic and environmental impact from the closures of fossil fuel power plants and coal mines, and advocate for better coordinated response.

Redford Center: $415,000 for awards to filmmakers to produce feature-length films that make environmental issues compelling and relatable, increase awareness, and inspire people to get involved in protecting the environment.

Urban Justice Center: $100,000 to help New York City’s street food vendors reduce pollution and protect their health and that of their customers by adopting greener technologies and practices. The Center will share environmentally friendly designs for food carts and trucks, as well as establish a citywide coalition to promote more sustainable and healthy street food vending.

Helping People with Visual Disabilities

Helen Keller Services: $71,000 to develop materials to improve providers’ ability to work with the deafblind community, help students gain an understanding of possible career options in rehabilitation and vocational training, and generate conversations on accessibility and inclusion.

JBI International: $217,000 to engage more New Yorkers with visual disabilities in Jewish interest materials through seminars and book clubs, and by providing audio, Braille, and large-print books.

The New York Community Trust

The New York Community Trust is a public charity and New York City’s largest community foundation. It connects generous people and institutions with high-impact nonprofits making the city and its suburbs a better place for all. It builds stronger communities, influences public policy, foster innovation, improves lives, and protects our environment.