Change Capital Fund Report: Essential Yet Invisible: Community Organizations in the Time of Covid

June 4, 2021

Essential Yet Invisible: Community Organizations in the Time of COVID, a report from the Change Capital Fund (CCF), highlights an underappreciated truth: New York City’s community-based nonprofits are critical in a crisis. Our city relies on an array of nonprofits to foster networks, deliver services and organize residents to make sure their needs are addressed. Over the past 15 months, community organizations saved lives. The data herein provides a snapshot of the aid that their eight current grantees marshalled for the first six months after the pandemic hit New York City in February 2020—with data systems CCF helped them to build. These groups stepped up even while some government funding was stepped down. Change Capital Fund supports the nonprofit community’s call to restore all of the government cutbacks and effective programs nonprofits consistently deliver. They believe philanthropy and government can better support these organizations now and going forward.

This report is from the Change Capital Fund, funders who have pooled their resources to support neighborhood-based, community development corporations for twenty-five years. Their long-term relationship with their grantees affords them an opportunity to get to know them well. Born in crises, New York City’s community development corporations (CDCs) formed to rebuild homes and revitalize their neighborhoods. Today, they remain essential emergency responders that work directly with residents to soften the blows of crises, call attention to the experiences of low-income people, and advocate for public policies that support them.

One grantee being Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation helped 135 residents access a range of jobs while their Brooklyn Business Center helped businesses to survive during the pandemic. They enabled businesses to access PPP loans and other supports, securing $4.5 million in capital, yielding $1.97 million in sales increases and leading 113 new employees to be hired, and 23 businesses to be saved.

VIEW CHANGE CAPITAL FUND REPORT: ESSENTIAL YET INVISIBLE: COMMUNITY ORGRANIZATIONS IN THE TIME OF COVID