SAN ANTONIO – A pair of San Antonio nonprofits that help survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence say they’ve been scrambling to fill unexpected budget deficits after part, or all, of their previous funding was left out of the city’s proposed budget.
However, the city council appears poised to add some of the money back into the budget, despite some members’ concerns about “opening up a can of worms.”
For Her and the Alamo Area Rape Crisis Center had both received pandemic relief dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) through the City of San Antonio for the past two years. Those dollars were absent from the FY 2026 budget when staff presented a draft version in August.
It wasn’t entirely unexpected; the city had always meant to use ARPA money as a temporary funding source.
However, the groups said they had been led to believe they would continue to get at least part of the funding this year.
In March, For Her and the Rape Crisis Center received emails from the city saying the Department of Human Services had proposed a plan to extend existing delegate agency contracts for up to another eight months, through May 2026.
For Her founder and CEO Kayla Carter said she had even followed up with city staff for clarification.
“And they did confirm that we were not going to have to reapply for that same money. It would just be prorated,” she said.
For Her received about $138,000 in both FY 2024 and FY 2025, which Carter estimated to be about 17% of its nonprofit’s budget — every single dollar of it from ARPA.
The funds have helped about 1,200 people over the course of two years, she said, helping pay for services like therapy and group support for domestic violence survivors or those at risk. It also helped pay for “trauma-informed yoga,” economic empowerment workshops, and helping women become self-sustainable.
Heading into the budget, Carter expected her group would receive a prorated funding amount of about $92,000. Instead, the city’s draft budget had it receiving nothing.
“To then be surprised with a phone call in August saying, ‘actually, you’re not in the budget at all.’ It was quite shocking and disappointing,” she said.
Carter said the group would likely have to reduce programs and serve fewer people to cover a deficit of that size.
The Rape Crisis Center, which has already seen about 680 clients in the past 10 months, responds to hospitals around the city to meet victims and provide support and follow-up services.
Of the $170,000 it has received in each of the past two years, a little more than half was from ARPA funds.
So, although CEO Audra Atzger was expecting roughly $113,000, based on eight months of funding, only about $56,000 was included in the budget — eight months’ worth of its regular city funding.
Already dealing with less state funding this year, Atzger said they have had to let go of three part-time staff members and shift more healthcare costs over to employees.
As a result of her staff being stretched thinner, Atzger said their ability to provide follow-up services like assistance with crime victim compensation applications and helping with resources might decrease.
“When we have a cut halfway and an extension and prorated at that, it also leaves us in a deficit,” Atzger said. “Considering that we have to do our budgets in advance, it does leave us in a precarious situation when we are not able to do what we need to do.”
A third nonprofit, Family Violence Prevention Services, received $277,000 worth of ARPA funding in the previous two years.
KSAT reached out to Family Violence Prevention Services on Wednesday for clarification on what the city had told it in the run-up to the budget, but a spokeswoman said the group’s CEO would reserve comment until after Thursday’s budget vote.
However, Human Services Director Melody Woosley seemed to lump FVPS in with For Her and the Rape Crisis Center in her comments at a Tuesday council budget discussion about “three agencies that received ARPA funding” over the previous two years.
“We sent an email out to delegate agencies that recommended — told them that we were recommending the eight months of funding so we could reset the contract process. And the agencies that were funded with ARPA received that. They should not have. That was a mistake on our part,” Woosley told council members.
“We’ve notified the agencies, and they disagree with that decision not to fund them. And so that’s how we’re here.”
As part of the budget amendments council members considered on Tuesday and Wednesday, there were proposals to give For Her $92,000 and the Rape Crisis Center $57,000, which would bring them up to the eight-month prorated equivalent of where their contracts were with ARPA funding.
A proposal for FVPS did not appear to take the former ARPA funding into account, but included a recommendation to combine its other city contracts and provide a full 12 months of funding rather than the prorated, eight months’ worth.
“So those are the three ones that I think are really important to make sure they become whole, because they were given that information,” Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) said.
To make those adjustments, though, city staff say they would have to dip into the four months of reserve funding the city had set aside for the delegate agencies already recommended within the budget.
Since the FVPS funding is already part of that, city staff say giving it a full 12 months of funding instead of just the eight months for now wouldn’t make a difference
However, giving For Her and the Rape Crisis Center extra funding now would mean there’s less to go around once the city starts its competitive funding process for delegate agencies in the fall.
“If we take from this bucket…to fund these agencies, we’re going to be hearing about it from other nonprofits, too, who are also going to have noble and worthy causes as well,” Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) said.
“It’s opening up a can of worms,” she said later.
At the end of the second day of budget amendment discussions on Wednesday, City Manager Erik Walsh said he planned to include the renewed funding for the Rape Crisis Center and For Her on the final list of amendments.
Those tweaks would be included when the council votes on the $4 billion budget during its 9 a.m. Thursday meeting.
The meeting will be livestreamed on KSAT.com and KSAT Plus.
Read also:
Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.