2023 Advocacy and Policy Agenda

Nonprofit organizations operate with insufficient infrastructure and resources. Our workforce and clients deserve more.

We understand that change must be achieved collaboratively. Nonprofit Westchester seeks partnerships with government, including the formation of a Nonprofit Contracting Taskforce, that will actualize needed, long-term solutions, and sustainable change that address systemic disparities in the following areas:

I. Equitable Contracting

Equitable government contracting with nonprofit agencies is essential to ensure that government mandated, and other critical services, are delivered to our county’s most vulnerable citizens – frail seniors; people with disabilities; survivors of domestic violence; children suffering abuse; people confronting mental illness, food insecurity/hunger and homelessness; jobseekers and more. Late procurement and late payment on contracts destabilize nonprofit organizations, negatively impacting our communities as a whole, the people we serve and the nonprofit workforce.

Delayed procurement and late payments by government partners over decades has seriously weakened the nonprofit infrastructure and has caused significant operational hardships for too many agencies.

Below market wages for Westchester’s nonprofit workforce and insufficient allowable reimbursement for necessary administrative and overhead costs, can no longer be absorbed by nonprofit organizations.

The negative impact of an inequitable contacting process for nonprofits:

• amounts to millions of dollars in non-reimbursable costs to nonprofits
• weakens our capacity to deliver services to society’s most vulnerable
• compromises our ability to hire staff and requires us to terminate staff when our agencies can no longer essentially float loans to government partners to keep our organizations operational
• compromises our capacity to pay a workforce that is already undervalued and underpaid; with a nonprofit workforce that is 80% women and 55% people of color, equitable contracting for nonprofit services is essential to advance racial equity
• perpetuates unnecessary inefficiencies and increased non-reimbursable administrative expenses.

II. Recommendations

1. Support livable wages and reasonable fringe benefits for the nonprofit workforce. Nonprofits are essential partners to government in the delivery of mandated and other critical services. A partnership that was originally based on an understanding that nonprofit agencies bring expertise, efficiency and cost savings to the equation in the delivery of services, has essentially become a method that too often awards contracts solely on lowest bid, suppresses nonprofit wages and reduces needed benefits including healthcare. The negative impact on the nonprofit workforce cannot be understated.
2. Eliminate caps on administration and overhead. Each nonprofit is different in terms of size and need for administrative investments. Allow nonprofits to explain and justify these expenses rather than placing arbitrary caps on critical cost of business expenses that continue to weaken nonprofit operational and financial infrastructures.
3. Reimburse nonprofit organizations for late payments. Nonprofit organizations cannot continue to absorb the considerable expenses that results from late payments on government contracted services. This is an added expense beyond the control of nonprofit organizations that needs to be fully reimbursed.
   

III. Advance the Issues of Our Member Organizations

Nonprofit Westchester will continue to provide a platform to advance recognition of and support for the diverse and intersecting issues addressed by our member organizations. 

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