It would slow down the operation of the organization. In this case, it's counterproductive to the director's aims. The director's goal is to maximize grant funding; a functional bureaucracy is essential for that goal. There is nothing the director can do to increase the funding, which is being cut by an external source. The legality of the funding cut is unclear, but the director has no agency in the outcome of a legal challenge.

But how would sending the http link slow things down?

Most link parsers, browsers, and sites will happily redirect you to available encrypted sites these days.

And even when they don't this is extremely dangerous advice to give for people who aren't technical.

It's a silly novelty website. Maybe this no longer happens, but for a period of time, browsers would present a warning that the website was insecure. The user would need to switch to https by updating the address. It was inconvenient.

You total chaos machine!

Give a wrong time. Stop a traffic line!

I've mentioned it too often and sound like a stuck record, but Jaroslav Hasek's Svejk has it perfected [0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk 11;rgb:0000/0000/0000