photo by: Niamh Coomey

Recently terminated AmeriCorps member Heather Ewing, left, sits with Director Kate Marshall outside the Mother Jones Center in East Wheeling, where Ewing had worked for four years.

WHEELING — Local nonprofits are reeling from the nearly $400 million in federal cuts to AmeriCorps grant funding through the Department of Government Efficiency. Some organizations are losing key staff members and others facing closure if they do not secure alternative funding.

It was a day filled with uncertainty, shock and tears for many AmeriCorps members and staff at organizations in Wheeling and around the Ohio Valley as they processed the news and began determining their next steps.

AmeriCorps, a federal organization that deploys largely young people to work for nonprofits and government organizations focused on everything from disaster response to employment and housing support, deploys more of their workers to West Virginia than any other state.

Grow Ohio Valley, a Wheeling-based farm-to-table organization that aims to secure the future economy of the region while supplying fresh produce, relies almost entirely on the AmeriCorps workforce.

“From what we gather, it’s over. (The AmeriCorps partnership with) Grow Ohio Valley is no more,” Executive Director Jason Koegler said. “We’re going to have to reach out to our community of supporters and seek alternative funds if we want to continue these programs that impact the community in a positive way.”

Staff are “extremely disappointed” in the cuts, Koegler said. He noted that many of the AmeriCorps volunteers that worked for Grow OV were college-aged people who came from other states and ended up staying in the Ohio Valley after their time with AmeriCorps ended.

“What they’re doing is slashing a program that provides an opportunity for service for young people across the country who want to make a difference in their community and for their country and to not have that opportunity any more … just … why? Why would you want to do something like this?” Koegler said.

The Mother Jones Center for Resilient Community in East Wheeling lost just under half of its staff to the AmeriCorps cuts. Known as the “MoJo,” Mother Jones is the headquarters for HoH-Share Inc, which uses creative strategies to support and uplift those struggling with poverty, addiction, trauma and other challenges.

The loss of the majority of their AmeriCorps staff is “devastating,” said MoJo Director Kate Marshall.

“There’s no way, us as a little nonprofit, could have that many members on staff doing the work that they do because the cost would be astronomical but this program allowed for it and also benefited the members,” Marshall said.

Marshall and others at the MoJo spent much of Tuesday processing the news together and working to determine how they can continue serving the community. In 2024, they helped around 5,000 Ohio Valley youth, not to mention the thousands of adults they have aided with finding and keeping employment.

“This is a travesty to us, but the fact that this is happening not just at a city level or a state level but nationally, that there’s 32,000 AmeriCorps going through the same thing, I can’t even wrap my head around it,” Marshall said. “The safety net that should exist in communities has just been obliterated.”

Youth Services System is one of many other local organizations being impacted, though they are less reliant on AmeriCorps than Grow OV and the MoJo.

ARPA cuts in March had already forced YSS to move their two suicide intervention specialists, one focused on youth and one on adults, to different positions within the organization. Now, the organization is losing the AmeriCorps staffers that helped with their fundraising efforts.

While one of these individuals had already ended their term with AmeriCorps, the other’s term, slated to end in June, has been cut short. This loss has a significant impact because YSS is very reliant on their fundraisers, YSS CEO Jill Eddy said.

Eddy is also concerned about potential future funding cuts. Grants support about 40% of the work that YSS does. Employees across all departments are also feeling “uneasy,” she said.

“Everybody has access to all forms of media. They’re reading the news, they’re hearing the news they’re reading about cuts at other organizations and they’re worried. We have staff who have continually asked about their positions, their programs,” Eddy said.

However with a staff of around 160, YSS is not feeling the cuts as dramatically as other, smaller organizations, like the MoJo, Eddy acknowledged.

Marshall said both the MoJo staff and the communities they serve are hurting.

“There’s just grief on a lot of levels,” Marshall said. “We all have moments where we just start crying. We work with communities that already experience so much crisis and instability and trauma. Man, it just feels like we’re adding a whole ‘nother layer.”