At its peak, NYANA served 50,000 refugees per year, but shifting policies and needs caused this to decline to between 300 and 400 in 2007. Its peak budget was $90 million, which by 2008 had shrunk to $7.5 million. Joseph Lazar, a management consultant who was himself born in a displaced persons camp in the late 1940s, was hired as director and a fund-raising dinner was held, but it raised only about $50,000 and the decision was made to close the agency in summer 2008.Adam Dickter, "NYANA to Close After Long Run Here," The Jewish Week, June 25, 2008, accessed May 16, 2012 Legal assistance cases were transferred to New York Legal Assistance Group, and the Business Center for New Americans, a department of NYANA providing financial and business services, became an independent economic development organization in 2009.
