The city of Tulsa has agreed to give $7 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to nonprofits in the city, but how it decides which ones get to apply is in question due to a lack of selection criteria.
Councilors Vanessa Hall-Harper, Jeannie Cue, Christa Patrick and Phil Lakin with members of Mayor G.T. Bynum’s office voted on nonprofits that applied for the federal dollars. The ones with at least three out of five votes from the committee are still considered candidates for the funding.
The ARPA working group narrowed the original applicant pool of 147 down to 79. But when asked at the council’s Urban and Economic Development meeting Wednesday, the councilors in the working group did not provide clear rules for whether a nonprofit made the new pool.
“Each one of us, we’re using different criteria just to determine if we move them forward to the next phase,” said Lakin.
Councilor Lori Decter Wright said some nonprofits she described as “longtime anchor institutions” were left off the list but declined to say which ones after the meeting. She also said there are several applicants she believes should prompt individual councilors to recuse themselves from assessing due to conflict of interest.
Public Radio Tulsa has requested the original list of considered applicants and the 79 selected by the committee.
The original 147 applicants requested a grand total of more than $38.3 million in their letters of intent. The dollar figure is now down to $15.4 million with the 79.
More than a quarter of the 79 nonprofits selected by the working group deal with health care. More than 21% provide children and youth services. The rest provide financial, housing, food or unclassified services, according to a presentation given at the meeting.
Decter Wright said the current pool of nonprofits will be narrowed down further before council finalizes the list. Lakin said he hopes to have a list of which nonprofits the city will let submit requests for proposal within a month from Wednesday.
Lakin said nonprofits didn’t make the list because “a lot of” members of the working group didn’t want them.
Cue and Patrick said the members of the group determined which nonprofits should be on the list after looking at things like capacity, experience with federal funds and if they would effectively serve the public with the money.
“At the end of the day, it was about a majority of people thinking that those were the most successful, or had the potential to be the most successful,” Patrick said.
Decter Wright expressed concern that she wouldn’t be able to explain the selection process to her constituents. She also questioned the selections.
“I don’t want to name names on this list. There’s just several that jump out to me from the information that we received in the distribution, what the thought process is," she said.
Going forward, councilor Laura Bellis suggested a rubric that outlines the requirements nonprofits will have to meet.
Whichever nonprofits make the final list, Lakin suggested the list be as short as possible to maximize the amounts the city could give them. But Hall-Harper questioned this approach — she believes it could lead to some nonprofits being left out.
“The reality is that you’re going to have the big kids on the block making the selections of who they choose to work with, and you’re always going to have that small group of disenfranchised organizations, and they’re always going to say, ‘Oh, they just work with the big people.”
Lakin said they have a month of work — if not longer — ahead of them before they put the list before council for final review, and then before the public.
“We want to get it right, and we want to use the tools that are necessary,” Lakin said.
