A Decade Later, New Orleans Nonprofits Cite Gains, Yet Worry Over the Future

By Megan O'Neil
Chronicle of Philanthropy

Melissa Sawyer founded the Youth Empowerment Project in 2004 in 1,200 square feet of rented space in Central City, a poor black neighborhood a mile southwest of the French Quarter. Her budget was $235,000, a combination of local grants and a state contract to help 25 young people caught up in the criminal-justice system.

 Today, the nonprofit has a $3.5-million operating budget. It owns its headquarters on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, a resurgent commercial corridor, and serves up to 800 youths annually, providing education, and job- and life-skills programs. 

The accelerant was a burst of philanthropic dollars in New Orleans in the years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita roared through, overwhelmed the levee system, and caused catastrophic flooding.

 "We have grown so much over the last 11 years," Ms. Sawyer says. "Quite frankly, I don’t know where we would have been if Katrina hadn’t happened."

 Still, for all the organizational gains, Ms. Sawyer is deeply worried about sustainability. She recently had two six-figure, multiyear grants from national grant makers expire with no replacements in sight. And she worries about the young people who pass through her doors every day and make up some of metropolitan New Orleans’s ugliest statistics: a third of children are living in poverty, just 57 percent of black men are employed, and incarceration rates are triple national figures.

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