New York nonprofits respond to a Biden presidency

As much of New York gathered in droves to celebrate the news that former Vice President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, nonprofits had their own reactions to the historic news.

Organizations involved in supporting immigrant New Yorkers expressed praise for Biden’s victory in light of President Donald Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. “We defeated anti-immigrant forces in the election – but undoing the legacy and the destruction of the last four years and more on immigrant communities will be an uphill battle,” read an email from the New York Immigration Coalition. A statement from Wayne Ho, president and CEO of the Chinese-American Planning Council, struck a similar tone: “The current Federal administration has devastated Asian American, immigrant and low-income communities, from enacting xenophobic immigration policies to dismantling the safety net and human services.”

Nonprofits that released statements in response to Biden’s victory also reiterated calls for relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Partnership for the Homeless emphasized the importance of passing a new congressional relief package to provide rental assistance to help New Yorkers at risk of facing eviction and homelessness, while Hunger Free America expressed interest in more action to stymie rising hunger caused by the pandemic and recession.

But as Suzanne Garment and Leslie Lenkowsky, academics at Indiana University, noted in a recent op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the nonprofit sector at large may continue to struggle under the new administration because of strains created by the pandemic and the likelihood of continued congressional gridlock. “Nonprofits will look for more assistance from the Biden administration to deal with these challenges,” they wrote. “But the federal government’s own staggering fiscal problems will limit the amount of help it can provide.”