Long before President Donald Trump took office determined to cut funding to federal agencies and nongovernmental organizations, the country’s transit sector was staring down what TransitCenter, a New York City-based private foundation dedicated to building support for abundant public transportation, called a “looming fiscal cliff.”
Emergency pandemic-era funding has dried up, ridership and revenues haven’t returned to pre-2020 levels and agencies continue to grapple with persistent staff shortages. Add it all up, and 51% of the 122 agencies surveyed by the American Public Transportation Agency are facing potential insolvency by 2028. That percentage jumps to 71% for agencies with operating budgets exceeding than $200 million.
Agencies are “trapped in a vicious cycle of service cuts that reduce ridership and erode public trust,” said TransitCenter Executive Director Stephanie Lotshaw. “That gives opponents to transit investments reasons to justify further cuts and reinforces the notion that transit is inherently an inferior transportation mode.”
But abundant public transportation is anything but inferior. It allows Americans to avoid the considerable costs of car ownership, boosts economic mobility and reduces pollution and traffic injuries. As the leader of what Lotshaw calls “one of the only foundations dedicated to building the movement in support of abundant public transportation in the U.S.,” she believes the sector hasn’t scratched the surface of its full potential while recognizing that impending funding cuts could prove catastrophic for agencies and the Americans who rely on them.
In mid-February, TransitCenter announced a 12-year spend-down strategy to “help advocates weather the existential threats posed by the new administration.” It’s a refreshing example of a foundation not only publicly calling out the administration, but backing up its rhetoric with a plan to transfer all of its assets — in this case, $69 million — to grassroots organizations advocating for essential transit services.
“The goal is to transform funding in service of more abundant public transportation,” Lotshaw said. “We need to invest in the creation of people power to turn it into political power to make policy change.”
Surveying a transportation advocacy field bracing for federal funding cuts
Incorporated in 2000, TransitCenter was a non-profit business that operated a program called TransitChek, allowing companies and individuals in the New York and New Jersey region to put pre-tax money toward their commuting costs. In 2012, TransitCenter sold the assets and operations of the TransitChek business line to Wage Works, Inc. The proceeds were used to seed the endowment of the newly launched foundation, also known as TransitCenter.
In 2013, TransitCenter hired its first executive director, David Bragdon. Since then, it has disbursed approximately $50 million to support transit advocacy.
In 2015, Lotshaw joined TransitCenter as its senior program manager after a five-year tenure at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, where she worked in its U.S. and East Africa program. She became TransitCenter’s acting executive director in March 2023 and assumed the full-time role in October.
Less than two years later, she and her team are navigating a perfect storm in which chronic underinvestment, the pandemic’s ripple effects and threats of federal funding cuts are thwarting efforts to provide Americans with access to affordable, reliable and clean public transportation options.
Lotshaw noted that 45% of Americans lack access to public transportation, burdening families with the cost of owning at least one car, which can amount to $12,000 in total annual expenses, restricting their ability to climb the economic ladder. The proliferation of cars makes neighborhoods less safe, contributes to a transportation system that generates 29% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and creates conditions where millions of Americans breathe unhealthy air.
These outcomes result from conscious policy choices made by our representatives at the local, state and federal levels. “We’re seeing how decades of underfunding have pushed transit toward collapse,” Lotshaw said. “And during COVID, we saw fundamental cracks in the system.”
The election of Trump has exacerbated fears about agencies’ precarious financial footing.
In a January post blasting the president’s freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding, TransitCenter grantee Evergreen Collaborative wrote that “cuts would likely cut a number of clean energy grants passed under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”
As often noted on IP, philanthropy has played an integral role in ensuring these dollars reach front-line infrastructure and transportation groups, as well as state, regional and local agencies. Federal funding cuts wouldn’t just deprive grassroots organizations of critical dollars, they’d also pump the brakes on complex foundation-led partnerships that have been years in the making.
On February 25, a U.S. judge extended an order blocking the administration’s funding freeze while acknowledging “there remained a risk the administration might again try to shut off funding,” wrote Reuters’ Nate Raymond. On March 6, a second federal judge indefinitely blocked the blanket freeze on federal grants and loans, saying the administration “put itself above Congress.”
But the president and Republicans in Congress are very much on the same page. On February 26, House Republicans adopted a budget proposal that calls on the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee, and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to find $880 billion and $10 billion in spending cuts, respectively.
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An overview of TransitCenter’s grantmaking
TransitCenter’s grantees advocate for affordable access to transportation services, expanded transit infrastructure, affordable housing near transit centers, zero-emissions buses, investments in bikeable and walkable cities, and more.
These organizations can be distributed across one of three buckets, reflecting what Lotshaw calls a “layered strategy to how we build a movement and what are the critical pieces that go into that.”
The core of its strategy involves grantees in TransitCenter’s first bucket — grassroots organizations that, according to Lotshaw, “are working to turn people power into political power and elevating community voices to ensure that decision-making at the state, local and federal levels meets communities’ needs.”
Representative grantees include Pittsburghers for Public Transit, New York City’s Riders Alliance and ISAIAH, a Minnesota-based coalition of organizations fighting for racial and economic justice.
The second bucket includes organizations focused on evidence-backed research and policy analysis. Examples include Chicago’s Active Transportation Alliance, the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, the D.C. region’s Coalition for Smarter Growth and Move LA.
TransitCenter’s final grantee bucket includes nonprofits “building narrative power,” Lotshaw said. They include the Disability Culture Lab, Labor Network for Sustainability, and Climate and Communities Institute.
Some of these grantees have received grants from funders that support a broad range of organizations in fields ranging from the arts to journalism, like the McKnight, Bush, MacArthur, Ford and Gates foundations, and Arnold Ventures. What sets TransitCenter apart is that it’s laser-focused on nonprofits advocating for abundant transportation.
“We see it as a multi-solver issue,” Lotshaw said. “It impacts households’ budgets, it can improve public health and create vibrant communities, all while addressing our emissions and climate needs. We just haven’t invested in it so that it can deliver its full potential.”
Why TransitCenter is spending down
TransitCenter’s trustees would discuss the idea of spending down, but the idea didn’t pick up steam until about a year ago when Lotshaw and her board recognized that the foundation, like many other grantmakers, had seen its endowment grow over the previous decade and bold action was needed to address the urgent fiscal crisis threatening transit services that millions of people depend on daily.
They also recognized that severe cuts in public funding were a very real possibility. The question of spending down became “more relevant as our local and national political situation became clear,” Lotshaw said. “We realized that if we wanted to live our mission and values, we needed to invest as much as we could now, and not later.”
TransitCenter stakeholders tapped the expertise of leaders of time-limited funders like the Kendeda Fund. These conversations generated a set of best practices for Lotshaw and her team, such as keeping in close communication with grantee partners.
“We spent most of 2024 engaging our grantees in our strategic direction process and most of them were familiar with what was on the table, so the decision wasn’t a surprise,” Lotshaw said. The decision was well received by grantee leaders who “saw we were doing what we could for people that are fighting the fight on the ground.”
The board’s decision to close TransitCenter’s doors was ultimately driven by the same cost-benefit calculation espoused by other spend-down proponents. If a sector is staring down an existential crisis where countless livelihoods are at risk, is the proper course of action slow-dripping 5% of the foundation’s assets annually until the end of time? Or is the field better served by giving trusted partners much larger grants that empower them to tackle the crisis head-on and ameliorate long-term impacts?
We obviously know where TransitCenter landed on this issue.
“This is the moment to act boldly,” Lotshaw said. “There are so many challenges facing the U.S. and the nonprofit sector, and we have the ability to step in. It’s also a moment to invest in organizations that show that government can work for people. Because who knows what will happen if we don’t?”
Note (3/6/25): The list of TransitCenter’s grantees seeking to “build narrative power” initially included some incorrect names and has been updated.
