On March 3, 2026, something rare happened at the Barclays Center: five Brooklyn nonprofits walked into one of the borough’s most famous arenas and walked out with $100,000 each — no strings attached. The occasion was the annual Brooklyn Org Spark Prize Breakfast, presented by NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, and the recipients this year represent some of the most vital, creative, and community-rooted work happening anywhere in New York City.
The Spark Prize, run by Brooklyn Org — a local philanthropy platform that has invested over $5 million into pioneering Brooklyn nonprofits since the prize’s inception — provides unrestricted general operating support. That means organizations can use it however they need most: hiring staff, expanding programs, covering rent, or just breathing a little easier. For grassroots groups that often cobble funding together from multiple narrow grants, it’s transformative.
Meet the 2026 Spark Prize Winners
This year’s five winners span the full breadth of Brooklyn’s challenges and strengths:
The B.R.O. Experience Foundation (Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Bushwick) is rewriting what mentorship looks like for Black and Latino young men in Central Brooklyn. Built on a cognitive behavioral therapy framework, BRO operates the BRO Space Wellness Center — a 4,500-square-foot facility in Bedford-Stuyvesant at 1090 Fulton Street — offering guided discussions, team-building workshops, rites of passage groups, and fatherhood programming. Founder Barry Cooper has been quietly doing this work for years; the Spark Prize recognition brings well-deserved spotlight to an approach that treats healing and brotherhood as the foundation of leadership.
Black Trans Femmes in the Arts (BTFA) supports Black trans femme artists in Brooklyn through community-led programming, event production, and mutual aid. The organization provides residencies, emergency grants, free studio space, and public platforms for performance and storytelling — creating both immediate safety nets and long-term artistic infrastructure for one of the city’s most underserved creative communities.
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), founded in Brooklyn in 2019, confronts discriminatory surveillance technologies through a combination of community-led digital safety trainings, litigation, research, and policy advocacy. In an era of expanding facial recognition and predictive policing tools, S.T.O.P.’s work protects civil liberties at the grassroots level.
The Asiyah Women’s Center provides emergency shelter, advocacy, and mental health and housing support for survivors of domestic violence from Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities in Brooklyn — a population that has historically faced significant barriers to accessing mainstream DV services.
YVote rounds out the 2026 class. The organization works to engage young New Yorkers in civic life, building a generation of politically active, informed residents across the borough.
Why Brooklyn Org Does It This Way
Brooklyn Org’s model is worth understanding. Rather than funding specific programs or requiring grantees to hit narrow metrics, the Spark Prize gives organizations money they can use however their leadership sees fit. That’s a deliberate philosophy: the people running these organizations know their communities best. A domestic violence shelter doesn’t need a funder telling it what to prioritize. What it needs is financial stability to do the work it already knows how to do.
In March 2026, Brooklyn Org also awarded $250,000 across 38 separate grassroots organizations borough-wide — demonstrating that the Spark Prize is just one part of a broader ecosystem of local philanthropic investment Brooklyn Org is building.
How to Support These Organizations
Each of the five Spark Prize winners has volunteer, donation, and awareness needs that go beyond the prize itself. You can learn more about all five at brooklyn.org/spark-2026. If you’re looking for ways to engage with Brooklyn’s nonprofit community more broadly, Brooklyn Org’s nonprofit directory is a great starting point.
For more on what makes Brooklyn neighborhoods tick — from the communities driving change in Crown Heights to the waterfront culture in Red Hook — check out our Brooklyn neighborhood guides and our guide to Brooklyn’s most vibrant local businesses.
What You Need to Know
- The 2026 Brooklyn Org Spark Prize awarded $100,000 each to five Brooklyn nonprofits on March 3, 2026, at the Barclays Center.
- Winners: The B.R.O. Experience Foundation, Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, S.T.O.P., Asiyah Women’s Center, and YVote.
- The B.R.O. Experience Foundation operates the BRO Space Wellness Center at 1090 Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy.
- All grants are unrestricted — organizations use the money however their communities need most.
- Brooklyn Org also distributed $250,000 to 38 additional grassroots organizations across the borough in March 2026.
- Learn more and support these organizations at brooklyn.org/spark-2026.
Brooklyn has always been a place where people build things from scratch. This year’s Spark Prize winners are proof that that spirit is very much alive — and that when the borough invests in its own people, extraordinary things get built.
