Rural nonprofits face uncertainty after federal funding freeze

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West Virginia's reliance on federal funds to help address deeply ingrained issues makes it particularly vulnerable to President Donald Trump's freeze on spending on federal loans and grants. Federally funded programs provide social safety nets and employment in one of the nation’s poorest, most rural states, where nonprofits play a vital role in providing basic services like healthcare, education and economic development. Coalfield Development helped leverage almost $700 million for projects tied to Biden administration spending packages—funding 1,000 jobs in West Virginia alone. Part of the nonprofit's role is to recruit and train the local workforce for the projects—something personal for CEO Jacob Hannah, who comes from three generations of coal miners and saw his father laid off from the mines. Hannah toured a former coal train refurbishment factory slated to become a manufacturing hub and business incubation space where workers should have been busy with rewiring, brick and roof repair. "So we took it on as a nonprofit to revitalize it for the community around us," said Hannah. "We'll use workforce development to do that. We train folks to have careers in construction so we want the space to have a new vibrancy inside it." Hannah's projects are now on pause indefinitely. Hannah said his organization received communications that their awards are “under review” with limited details. Alecia Allen runs a therapy practice and grocery store in a low-income neighborhood in West Virginia's capital called Keep Your Faith Corporation. She wasn't getting answers from federal agencies about the grants that help her work with farmers to provide local, healthy food to her community at a lower cost. Then a vendor she buys from to stock store shelves told her that her weekly bill was going up from $500 to $850 because of tariffs. "Our scope of work is not political," said Allen. "We just want to move the health of the state forward and we don't want that to be impacted by what's happening at the political level." This article was provided by The Associated Press.