Worcester nonprofits see ‘blatant racial equity issues’ in some ARPA funding decisions

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Worcester must decide by the end of the year how it will spend its remaining $44.3 million in federal pandemic relief money. With that deadline looming, some local nonprofit leaders are criticizing the city for inequitably dispersing some of the money in prior grant rounds — and urging officials to do better.

The American Rescue Plan Act money is intended to support economic recovery and address long-term challenges, especially those affecting communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. But some nonprofits and activists argue Worcester has used a lot of its ARPA funds to continue a pattern of preferential treatment to larger, well-funded organizations over small Black- and brown-led groups.

“This is not fair to the communities we’re serving,” said Sha-Asia Medina, executive director of The Village Worcester, a community center that spotlights Black culture. “The city has been given ample opportunity to address the problem. It’s not hard.”

Medina and a few other nonprofit leaders plan to deliver a petition to Worcester City Council demanding officials “use the remaining ARPA funds for the communities that it was originally intended for.” The petition notes that nonprofit leaders have repeatedly spoken with city leaders about what they describe as “blatant racial equity issues” in the funding process, but their concerns “continue to go ignored.”

In an August memo, Worcester City Manager Eric Batista responded to some of the criticisms. He wrote that his administration has tried to use the ARPA money to respond to “emerging and persistent needs in the community.”

Since receiving $146 million in ARPA funds in 2021, Worcester officials have made much of the money available to nonprofits to address a range of issues that affect underserved communities, from food insecurity to youth violence.

And some smaller nonprofits have secured large grants. The Jubilee Career Center for the Performing Arts, for example, secured a $227,000 grant in 2023 that has helped the organization fund free after-school arts and technology programming on a mobile classroom bus.

Still, critics say the majority of Worcester’s ARPA distributions have amounted to “business as usual.”

Batista said the city based its recent arts and culture funding decisions — amounting to nearly $3 million — on how much organizations suffered during the pandemic, giving bigger grants to venues with more staff and that lost revenue during pandemic closures. Several large organizations received the maximum $125,000, more than twice the amount of smaller groups like The Village.

“The city got it wrong once again,” said local equity and justice activist Maydee Morales.

Activists note that the Worcester Art Museum and Mechanics Hall were among the cultural groups that received the largest grants, even though both reported millions in revenue and fundraising efforts. Hanover Theatre, EcoTarium and the Mass Symphony Orchestra also received the maximum.

For comparison, the Worcester Caribbean American Carnival Association received $40,000 in the same round of grants. While Jennifer Gaskin, the association’s founder, is grateful for the funding, she said organizations like hers deserved more money because they regularly work with underserved communities that suffered most during the pandemic. A bigger grant, she added, would have been transformative for her organization, which has an annual budget of about $100,000.

“If I was getting $120,000, I could hire an executive director that could be out here fundraising and making connections with the community and building our capacity,” she said. “We want to be able to have year-round programming” beyond our annual carnival.

Local activist and former chair of the Worcester Human Rights Commission Guillermo Creamer Jr. said smaller nonprofits can be especially impactful when their leaders share the lived experiences of the people they’re working with. He said marginalized residents lose out when those groups can’t access as much funding.

“The city needed to be more creative,” he said, “and I think that creativity should have come with [the goal], ‘We want to make sure that this funding can change the direction of an organization that is on the ground because that’s what this funding was for.’”

The Worcester Art Museum did not respond to a request for comment.

The Hanover Theatre’s acting President and CEO Troy Siebels said it was appropriate for bigger venues like his to receive more funding because they lost a lot of money when operations shut down during the pandemic, and they continue to struggle financially.

“The number of performances a year is still not back to where we were pre-pandemic,” Siebels said. “We’re grateful for the help.”

In his memo, Batista said the city took steps to ensure the ARPA process was equitable, like extending grant deadlines and working with organizations to correct mistakes in their applications. The city added that some smaller nonprofits’ grants actually amount to a higher proportion of their budgets than the money bigger venues received.

But several nonprofit leaders say even when the city selects them for an ARPA grant, it’s not guaranteed they’ll actually secure the money because the city’s imposing strict and burdensome requirements on them.

When Sha-Asia Medina and her mom, Parlee Jones, applied for ARPA funding in 2022 for The Village, they saw it as an opportunity to repair their building and expand the nonprofit’s programming, which includes free reiki and yoga classes, cookouts and talent shows.

Soon after receiving over $100,000 in ARPA grants, however, they quickly learned the money came with barriers. They say Worcester officials told them to pay for the building’s repairs out of pocket, and the city would reimburse them in increments. But Medina and Jones don’t have the money to front the cost.

They say the city also has required that they collect sensitive information from the people who take The Village’s classes. Medina says one form asked for people’s addresses, if they received food stamps or income-restricted benefits, and whether they were people of color.

Medina said she and her mom don’t feel comfortable reporting that personal information to the city. They say they’re considering forgoing some of the grant money as a result of the strict requirements.

“Wanting people to fill out those invasive forms and us having to send that information to City Hall — we couldn’t figure out a way to do that in a way that didn’t disrupt the energy of the space where people can kind of just freely walk in,” Medina said.

In an email, a spokesperson for Worcester said the city is following federal requirements and organizations have to meet certain eligibility requirements to receive advanced funding.

But while much of the ARPA distribution process is left to local governments, the U.S. Department of Treasury explicitly said it doesn’t have a preference for the way grantees are paid.

David Thompson, acting CEO and the vice president of the National Council of Nonprofits, said Worcester seems to be committing the same mistake as other communities across the country: They’re making the distribution process and subsequent requirements a lot stricter than the federal government requires.

“The city has opted for safety instead of impact,” Thompson said. “It’s easy to put money into established entities that have public support, and it takes more time and perhaps more risk to invest funds in smaller organizations that are innovating. It’s disappointing.”

Sam Turken is the Worcester reporter for GBH News.