LiteracyCNY’s
Fate Signals Trouble Ahead For NY Nonprofits (Editorial)
Syracuse.com:
11.08.2020
LiteracyCNY
After
six decades of teaching many thousands of adults how to read, the nonprofit LiteracyCNY will suspend operations at
the end of this month. The agency became a casualty of the coronavirus
pandemic, New York’s cratering finances and the state’s bureaucratic
indifference to paying its bills on time.
New
York state owed roughly $100,000 to LiteracyCNY, some from last year and most
from this year’s contract payments that were suspended under a pandemic
executive order by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Unable
to raise that kind of money, unsure when the state would come through with what
it owed and uncertain about what next year would bring, the agency’s board decided
it had no choice but to wind down operations.
It
is a profound loss for the adult
literacy movement that flowered in Syracuse, and a cruel blow to Ruth J. Colvin,
the 103-year-old dynamo who founded its precursor, Literacy Volunteers of
Greater Syracuse, in her basement in 1962.
Local pride aside, we fear LiteracyCNY’s fate awaits other nonprofits, with harmful consequences for the people and communities they serve.
In a July letter to the governor, 700 nonprofits warned of their rapidly deteriorating finances as the state froze contract payments and the executive order suspended prompt payment laws. “Many nonprofits entered this pandemic at a breaking point caused by underfunded and late contracts, late payments, high staff turnover, stagnant wages, fully tapped-out credit lines, and limited or nonexistent cash reserves,” the letter stated. READ MORE ➤➤
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