Center For Employment Opportunities, Inc

Lobbying client

The Center for Employment Opportunities is a nonprofit, launched in the late 1970s as a Vera Institute of Justice project and incorporated independently in 1996, that provides transitional paid jobs, coaching, and job placement exclusively for people recently released from incarceration, with New York City as its headquarters and largest program site. It has filed 33 disclosures since 2024, lobbying all 51 council members through CoMadre Communications, Mirram Group, and Oaktree Solutions for city budget funding of its reentry employment programming, and our data shows about $46.6 million in city contracts tied to it since 2016, none currently active.

Council members lobbied
51 (citywide)
Filings (since 2024)
33
Lobbying compensation (since 2024)
$173,999
Industry (per city contracts)
Human Services
City contracts
none active as of 2026-08-22 · $46,630,209 awarded since 2016
Paid to date
$44,276,965
Won without a fresh bid
100% of contract value · $46,630,209 · 34 contracts
Discretionary funding (FY2009-FY2027)
$15,154,358 · 161 awards
Funding history
Funded every year since FY2015 (13 years running)
Top officer pay (FY2023)
$461,906 · Samuel Schaeffer, CEO & Executive Director
Based in
New York, NY

Represented by lobbyist firms

Holds contracts at

Funded by these agencies

What they lobbied on

subjects from their filings

City contracts

Registered city contracts, largest first by current contract value (not amount spent): running now, then registered to start later, then ended. Totals count every registered contract. Each line shows its Checkbook contract ID. The tag on each row is how it was awarded (“no-bid” = non-competitive).

Largest payments, by purpose

The organization's largest individual city payments (roughly $25,000 and up), grouped by purpose, to show what recent money was for. This is NOT a total — smaller payments aren't listed; see “Paid to date” above for the complete amount paid against its contracts. Fiscal years 2020 and later.

Discretionary funding received

City Council discretionary (member-item) awards, largest first. Covers FY2009-FY2027.

Funded by these council members

City Council members who steered discretionary (member-item) money to this organization, largest first (FY2020 and later, where the sponsoring member is disclosed). Sitting members link to their page.

Officer & key-staff pay

Reportable compensation from this organization's IRS Form 990 (Part VII), latest available filing (FY2023). Includes pay from related organizations where reported; an annual figure, not a running total. Source: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.

Officer pay over time

Total officer pay changed +18% from FY2020 to FY2023. Top-officer reportable compensation by year (org-paid only), with each year's share of total revenue. Source: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer 990 filings.

Federal awards

Federal awards made directly to this organization in fiscal years 2023 through 2026. Each amount is what the federal government has OBLIGATED on that award as recorded on USAspending.gov as of 2026-08-31 — money committed, not money paid out. These are prime awards only: federal money this

Congressional testimony

Congressional committee meetings where congress.gov lists a witness whose stated affiliation is exactly this organization's name, for the 118th and 119th Congresses, as of 2026-09-01. Name variations are not matched, so an appearance filed under a different spelling of this organization is missing

Sources