The WNY Forward Fund is a collaborative effort of twelve Western New York funders united to support our community and nonprofits that provide essential programs and services in the face of major shifts in federal funding and priorities since early 2025. These changes have created financial strain, rapid change, and deep uncertainty, at a time when community need is increasing.
Western New York is facing a perfect storm of economic pressures. The loss of federal funding, cost increases, and declining tourism are straining the region’s nonprofit sector at a critical moment. With nearly 10,000 jobs already lost, low-income and marginalized communities—those who rely most heavily on nonprofit services—are bearing the greatest burden.
This Fund is a multi-year commitment to help ensure that the WNY community and the nonprofit sector remain strong, resilient, and equipped to adapt, similar to our collective response to crises including the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2022 racially-motivated shooting on Buffalo’s East Side. A total of $2.3 million has been allocated to the Fund to date.
The philanthropic community’s goal in working together is to help protect and strengthen the community, while encouraging innovation and reimagining how to best use community resources for long-term resilience.
If you would like to contribute to the WNY Forward Fund, please click here.
Purpose
While local funders can’t fully replace lost federal dollars, estimated to be nearly $7 billion in the first quarter of 2025 across New York, we can help spark innovation, strengthen capacity, and encourage nonprofits to rethink how services are delivered more efficiently, collaboratively, and sustainably.
We will also work together to ensure that all WNY residents are afforded respect and dignity, as well as access to equal justice, due process, and legal defense when necessary. Using data and storytelling, we will also highlight the impact of these shifting priorities and the critical role that nonprofits play in supporting our community.
Priorities
The Fund is intended to be a multi-year effort through select grantmaking and support of priority initiatives across three focus areas. These priorities include:
Strategic Alliances & Nonprofit Resiliency – Grant applications now open.
Our first action is to support grant proposals from local nonprofits pursuing partnerships, shared services, mergers, or other collaborations to help organizations adapt to the evolving environment, and remain resilient and responsive to community needs.
This includes explorations of partnerships, shared services, mergers, and other collaborative models that enhance effectiveness, capacity, and financial stability. This grant opportunity will also support exploration of potential dissolution planning for those nonprofits considering winding down operations.
Grants of up to $25,000 are available and are intended to spur reimagining of service delivery and innovation within the nonprofit sector.
Grant applications for exploration of strategic alliances and partnerships are now open with a deadline of Friday, December 12 at 4 p.m. Grant awards will be announced in January.
We expect to offer future grant opportunities in this area, so if your nonprofit is not quite ready to apply now, there will be additional opportunities in 2026. Click here to learn more and apply.
If you are interested in keeping up to date on learning opportunities around nonprofit collaboration and restructuring, please sign up for the Nonprofit Support Group (NSG) newsletter and find resources and tools on Impact HQ,
Civic Health & Building Common Ground
We are exploring opportunities to fund and support initiatives that protect access to justice, due process, and legal defense, and building deeper connections between public institutions and the stakeholders they serve.
As part of this priority area, the WNY Forward Fund will support the Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project (ECBAVLP) with a $150,000 grant to support participation in the Upstate Immigration Pro Bono Collaborative. This initiative recruits, trains, and mentors private attorneys to take on immigration cases and ensure that all litigants are adequately represented in the justice system. ECBAVLP is the Collaborative’s anchor organization in WNY and is critical to the effort as Buffalo is home to the only immigration court in New York State outside of New York City. Despite a recent loss of significant funding that supported pro bono coordination for immigrant legal services, ECBAVLP is managing 180 active immigration cases, including 25 scheduled for trial this fall.
Impact Data & Storytelling
Supporting efforts to collect and share critical data on how funding cuts affect organizations and the people they serve, while helping us to better understand, support and communicate the region’s evolving needs.