Shapiro planned to flat fund rape crisis centers. They convinced him to double their line item.

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. Sign up for our free newsletters.

HARRISBURG — After years of asking for more funding, Pennsylvania’s rape crisis centers saw their funding nearly doubled in this year’s state budget, a lifeline that the resource-starved organizations say will allow them to restore staff and services.

The $12 million increase brings total annual funding for the state’s 47 rape crisis centers to just over $24 million, and comes after they were left flat-funded for six of the past 10 budget cycles.

Administrators at and advocates for these centers say they had to convince Gov. Josh Shapiro and his administration that the situation was dire.

“I listened,” Shapiro said at a Monday news conference. “These people are true public servants, the work they do every day,” he said. “They deserve more, and they got it.”

The lack of new state funding, along with federal cuts, the budget impasse of 2025, and ongoing inflation, has troubled crisis centers in recent years, leaving the majority financially strained to the point of cutting staff and services, administrators and advocates told Spotlight PA.

They said the influx of dollars will help reinstate cut programs and workers, but cautioned there’s still a long way to go to mend years of underfunding.

“Sexual assault centers have been ringing this bell with our legislators for the past two to three years, trying to explain that we are really coming into the precipice of a real risk for crisis services declining or crumbling in many different parts of our state and of our counties,” said Ali Perrotto, chief executive of the Sexual Assault Resource and Counseling Center serving Lebanon and Schuylkill Counties.

The commonwealth’s 47 rape crisis centers provide services to around 26,000 survivors of sexual violence annually, according to the state Department of Human Services. These services include 24/7 hotlines and crisis counseling; prevention education; housing; and training on sexual assault-related issues.

State funding for these centers is distributed through a formula that takes into account population density, number of victims served, and hours of direct service provided. Centers also receive federal dollars, as well as grants and donations. Funding streams vary drastically by center: While some larger ones have relatively diverse finances, others are highly dependent on the state to operate.

In 2025, lawmakers approved a 2% funding bump amounting to around $250,000 more for all crisis centers. Advocates said this was not enough to meet the needs of organizations already in deep financial straits due to the four-month impasse that preceded the budget deal.

Rape crisis centers are among the nonprofits and other entities whose state payments get frozen when there is no budget. Perrotto said the situation forced SARCC to cut its prevention services and put off a capital purchase that would have provided housing for survivors in Lebanon County. The decision came after the center had to decide between investing in property or paying its staff, she said.

Other centers, she added, had to dip into reserve funds or use lines of credit to keep paying wages. When the budget finally passed last year, the number of workers had dwindled to the point where centers were unable to restore everything. And organizations that did take out loans or use lines of credit still have to pay interest, which can only be financed through fundraised dollars, not grants.

The impasse wasn’t the only difficulty. Rape crisis centers receive funding from the federal Victims of Crime Act fund. Money in the fund comes from fines paid by people who are federally convicted and goes to a range of services for crime victims. However, administrative changes at the federal level have lowered the fund’s balance. A state guide published this spring said money is now “critically low,” a dip that has caused a 45% decrease in victim services funding since 2022.

At the same time, the number of survivors seeking services at rape crisis centers increased, Perrotto said.

That uptick stems from lawmakers expanding the responsibility of local law enforcement, who now must directly refer victims to service agencies. This has increased the number of people coming through the doors of crisis centers.

“We had more influx into the systems, even though we had fewer staff to meet the need and less funding to provide the services locally,” Perrotto said.

There was often little rape crisis centers could do to tighten their belts further.

Perrotto said that over the past five years, SARCC has cut 50% of its staff. Those who remained working provided constant access to services, including a 24-hour support line along with counseling, legal, and medical support.

“The longer an impasse goes, the more of a tax there is on survivors and on the centers who are providing services to them,” Perrotto said.

When Shapiro first made his budget pitch in February, it didn’t address these issues; he proposed keeping funding flat once again.

This caused an uproar from rape crisis centers. Advocates and administrators at centers across the commonwealth signed on to a letter asking for a $12.5 million bump.

“Every year, flat funding has been equal to a budget cut, forcing centers to stretch already-thin resources even further as inflation and demand rise,” the letter said.

It wasn’t until Shapiro listened to advocates and heard their testimonies that he realized the magnitude of the issue, he said during a Monday news conference at the YWCA in Carlisle.

Joyce Lukima, director of the Pennsylvania Coalition to Advance Respect, which distributes state funding and advocates for rape crisis centers, said center leaders from across the state also met with lawmakers in May to discuss the need for funding.

She said this year is the first time she believes advocates’ concerns were actually listened to.

“After so many years of talking about this, I feel that we were heard and heard in a way that caused someone who was in a position to be able to take action to help move our cause forward,” she said.

Perrotto was part of that effort. She compiled data about crisis centers’ needs across the commonwealth and presented it to Val Arkoosh, head of the state Department of Human Services.

Detailed information on centers’ services and various funding streams was necessary to clearly illustrate to legislators the magnitude of the problem, said Arkoosh at the Monday event. Perrotto said the data she gathered showed the “buying power cut” of rape crisis centers — a loss in ability to pay for bills, staff, and services while still helping the same number of people.

While the money alone is a step in the right direction, Lukima said there’s going to be a lot of necessary rebuilding to right the wrongs of previous years’ funding difficulties.

She added there’s also a need to ensure that funding keeps pace with inflation to prevent centers from reaching their limits before getting more state resources.

Perrotto echoed that point. “There’s going to be a build-up period, so we have to build back and restore what was lost or what was kind of crumbling in the current system, and we’re doing that with less staff,” Perrotto said.

Along with rehiring furloughed workers, she said the new money will also go toward properly paying people who worked through underfunding. In 2022, her most recent analysis, Perrotto said the average wage for prevention educators and advocates working at sexual assault programs was $16 to $18 an hour.

Increasing wages will ensure survivors are taken care of by workers who aren’t stretched too thin, or who need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. Centers will also put funding toward restoring programs to ensure the caseload is not as heavy, she said.

Lukima said she also predicts centers’ money will be allocated toward reinstating sexual abuse prevention programs that were cut in favor of maintaining services seen as more critical.

At the end of the day, she said, rape crisis centers are essential for survivors of sexual violence, and lawmakers should treat them that way.

“There isn’t a necessity for people to get to a breaking point before they get that increased allocation,” Lukima said, “recognizing how critical and important services are to the community, to the state, and making sure that that increase comes — just like it does for many other professions, just like it does for our legislatures — without having to have a multiyear struggle.”

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.