Open Data

We make available the data FPWA collected, organized, and analyzed over the past year in interactive spreadsheets to explore data and easily analyze the impact of current federal budget proposals on New York City’s federal human services grants. By doing so, we hope to empower individuals and policymakers to work alongside us to protect and strengthen federal funding that supports the City’s human services budget and sector. Sign up to receive data updates.

Federal Budget Analyzer: Anyone can use this tool to easily visualize the impact of current federal budget proposals on New York City’s federal human services grants. FPWA’s nonprofit human services members can do the same for their organization’s federal funding. (Due to thresholds in federal reporting, only organizations that receive more than $750 thousand in federal grants are able to use this tool.)
Inflation Adjuster: Many human services programs remain below federal fiscal year (FFY) 2010 levels when adjusted for inflation. Use this tool to contextualize budget proposals by illustrating inflation-adjusted trends since FFY 2010.
Current Year Funding: Dive deeper to see how federal human services grants support programs within New York City’s human services agencies.
All Federal Grants: View our updated master list of all federal grants supporting New York City, FFY 2010 – current
FPWA’s Tableau Public Profile: Due to the size of New York City’s human services agencies and the number of federal grants that support them, ‘current funding’ charts in the Tracker’s agencies pages feature just a few federal grants (e.g., largest grant by FFY 2020 funding levels). Visit Tableau to view all data, explore other dashboards (e.g., census data, budget analyses, etc.), and share them on social media/embed them into digital media.

Watch our training video for a demonstration of the Tracker’s open data features, download our step-by-step instructions, or please contact FPWA’s Fiscal Policy team for technical assistance or personalized training that is tailored to your specific needs.

Methodology

The Federal Funds Tracker relies on a number of data sources, requires certain assumptions, normalizes data to reflect intent, and categorizes grant data for uniformity and analysis.

Current Year Data: For FY 2019 figures, we rely on the New York City’s Office of Management and Budget’s Budget Function Analysis (BFA) report from the FY 2019 Adopted Budget. The BFA details the expense budget of certain agencies by major functional areas and are updated for the Preliminary, Executive, and Adopted Budgets. Each year, we will update the Federal Funds Tracker with data from the Preliminary Budget, which reflects the most up to date estimates of the current fiscal year. The disadvantage of the BFA is that expenses are estimates. The advantage is that the BFA provides a level of detail not available elsewhere by detailing federal grants by program area, which is simply a way to categorize an agency’s spending into program areas.
Historical Data: For FY 2010 through FY 2018 trend analyses, we rely on data from the New York City Comptroller’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). These reports are published in October of each year and report on “actual” spending during the previous fiscal year — that is, what the city actually spent versus the estimated spending in current year budget documents. These data are adjusted for inflation. Each year, we will update the trends in actual spending when the CAFR is released. We use 2010 as a baseline for our analysis because that is the year before the Budget Control Act passed Congress that called for automatic cuts in spending if Congress could not curtail spending on its own.
Exclusions: Historical data excludes one-time funding sources from the economic stimulus provided by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) following the Great Recession, and Disaster Relief aid, such as for Hurricane Sandy. ARRA was effective in creating jobs, and keeping families out of poverty keeping families out of poverty in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and Disaster Recovery funds are critical for emergency-preparedness and infrastructure investments, but one-time fiscal boosts do not reflect Congresses longer-term spending intent.
Primary Federal Grants and City-Wide Federal Grants: Because city officials have discretion in how grants are allocated among agencies, and do not have the same flexibility in other cases, we categorize agency grants as “primary” grants if they exclusively and consistently supported an agency since FY 2010 (24 percent of the four agencies’ federal grants) or “city-wide” grants if they have consistently but not exclusively supported one or more of the Federal Funds Tracker’s four agencies since FY 2010 (76 percent of the four agencies’ federal grants).

To determine the cost of erosion for cross-agency grants by agency, we assume the share of a particular grant allocated to an agency in the latest year data is available remained constant during the decade and apply that to the cost of the cross-agency grant’s total erosion (real amount – nominal amount = cost). We only analyze a cross-agency grant if it supported the agency each year during the decade so as to not overstate the impact.

Real vs Nominal and the Cost of Erosion: The cost of government grows roughly at the same rate of the economy. Therefore, when making long term comparisons, data is adjusted to reflect the rate of economic growth in NYC using personal income data for New York-Jersey City-White Plains, NY-NJ (Metropolitan Division) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

This can be expressed as a dollar amount to quantify the cost of letting a grant erode (real amount – nominal amount = cost) or as a percentage to determine if the share of our overall resources being allocated to these goals is increasing or decreasing over time.

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Open Data

We believe that democratizing the Tracker’s data and making it easy to analyze is a means by which to build power to protect critical federal funding that supports the City’s social services budget and sector.

The following data will be updated frequently as federal budget proposals are released and city data are updated. Sign up for data updates.

Federal Budget Analyzer: Analyze and visualize the impact of federal budget proposals
Inflation Adjuster: Contextualize budget proposals to show inflation-adjusted trends since FY 2010
Current Year Funding: Explore federal revenue data for ACS, DSS, DYCD, and DFTA
All Federal Grants: Explore all federal grants to NYC dating back to 2010
FPWA’s Tableau Public Profile: Share charts on social and embed them into digital media

Methodology

The Federal Funds Tracker relies on a number of data sources, requires certain assumptions, normalizes data to reflect intent, and categorizes grant data for uniformity and analysis.

Current Year Data: For FY 2019 figures, we rely on the New York City’s Office of Management and Budget’s Budget Function Analysis (BFA) report from the FY 2019 Adopted Budget. The BFA details the expense budget of certain agencies by major functional areas and are updated for the Preliminary, Executive, and Adopted Budgets. Each year, we will update the Federal Funds Tracker with data from the Preliminary Budget, which reflects the most up to date estimates of the current fiscal year. The disadvantage of the BFA is that expenses are estimates. The advantage is that the BFA provides a level of detail not available elsewhere by detailing federal grants by program area, which is simply a way to categorize an agency’s spending into program areas.

Historical Data: For FY 2010 through FY 2018 trend analyses, we rely on data from the New York City Comptroller’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). These reports are published in October of each year and report on “actual” spending during the previous fiscal year — that is, what the city actually spent versus the estimated spending in current year budget documents. These data are adjusted for inflation. Each year, we will update the trends in actual spending when the CAFR is released. We use 2010 as a baseline for our analysis because that is the year before the Budget Control Act passed Congress that called for automatic cuts in spending if Congress could not curtail spending on its own.

Exclusions: Historical data excludes one-time funding sources from the economic stimulus provided by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) following the Great Recession, and Disaster Relief aid, such as for Hurricane Sandy. ARRA was effective in creating jobs, and keeping families out of poverty keeping families out of poverty in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and Disaster Recovery funds are critical for emergency-preparedness and infrastructure investments, but one-time fiscal boosts do not reflect Congresses longer-term spending intent.
Primary Federal Grants and City-Wide Federal Grants: Because city officials have discretion in how grants are allocated among agencies, and do not have the same flexibility in other cases, we categorize agency grants as “primary” grants if they exclusively and consistently supported an agency since FY 2010 (24 percent of the four agencies’ federal grants) or “city-wide” grants if they have consistently but not exclusively supported one or more of the Federal Funds Tracker’s four agencies since FY 2010 (76 percent of the four agencies’ federal grants).