Some good news is coming from the NYS Grants Gateway Team. As many of you know, the Nonprofit Revitalization Act requires many nonprofits to change bylaws and certain documents, including many of those required by the "Gateway" in order to obtain "prequalified" status. In the past, when these documents were changed or the document vault was even "opened," nonprofits would automatically lose their "prequalified" status - potentially denying them the ability to apply for new grants or renew existing contracts. Thus the problem - virtually every nonprofit that receives a grant from the State would need to resubmit documents and then lose, for an unknown period of time, their prequalification status. 

NYCON and NYCON members were the first ones to identify this problem and we brought the issue to the legislature and the Governor's Office. Yesterday the Gateway Team announced that effective July 1st, the requirement that nonprofit grantees be prequalified on the due-date for applications is suspended for 90 days. The suspension of the enforcement of prequalification will allow nonprofit grantees time to adopt new policies and adjust to the new filing requirements, while still being eligible for State grant funding. 

This is a temporary solution - one for which we are thankful to the Executive Branch. We cannot stop here, however, as the structural problem with Gateway remains and there is no guarantee that the State will approve submitted documents within the 90 day period. For a long term solution, legislation has been introduced, at NYCON's urging, to permanently fix the Gateway System by holding all nonprofits harmless for simply updating documents. 

We remain hopeful that Gateway Bills S. 7340 / A. 9599 will pass this session and be signed by the Governor as will Bills S. 7341 / A. 9600 to reasonably delay to March 1, 2015 the implementation of the Nonprofit Revitalization Act. 

This change is proof that our voices do make a difference and we greatly thank our members for making sure they are heard!