This commentary is by Rob Riley and Maura Adams. Riley is president and Adams is director of community investment for the Northern Forest Center, a nonprofit investment and innovation partner dedicated to revitalizing Northern Forest communities in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.
The Northern Forest Center partners with rural communities to create places where people can thrive, and where the forested landscape provides rich opportunities for recreation, economic vitality and ecological stewardship. For more than 25 years we have worked with local, state and federal partners across all political parties to invest in the region’s people and its future. And when it comes to advocacy and public policy, we prefer to talk about what we are for, rather than what we are against.
Today, however, we feel compelled to raise our voice against budget and program cuts by the current federal administration that are gutting essential resources for rural communities. Our position is driven not by politics, but by data and people from across the region we serve.
In April, we informally surveyed 150 nonprofit organizations and municipalities across the Northern Forest region of Northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York to learn how they were being impacted by recent changes in federal policies. Sixty percent of the 79 respondents reported that they rely on federal funding for at least 20% of their annual budget.
The survey gave us a direct view into a rural-specific sample that revealed the significance of canceled contracts, eliminated grant programs and fewer federal staff. These 79 respondents alone reported a loss of at least $18.1 million in canceled or frozen grants or funds no longer available, citing 20 federal agency programs.
The cuts are putting nonprofit services at risk nationwide. In the Northern Forest region, cuts affect a wide range of projects that had been designed to revitalize communities – 200 units of housing in a single small town, conservation easements, community facility repairs, trail construction, water systems, food pantry provisions, downtown tree planting, sewer system upgrades, regional promotion, culverts for flood mitigation. The list goes on, well beyond the organizations in the Northern Forest Center’s direct sphere.
In addition, organizations and municipalities have been thrown into uncertainty, losing their ability to plan, hire staff and launch or deepen programs. More than 20 respondents expect that they will need to decrease programming and staff this year. Also evident in responses is the toll on people’s psyches — respondents said the situation is “creating a sense of unease, which saps energy and morale,” and that staff feel rampant “uncertainty and chaos.”
These draconian cuts were not necessary. Having managed dozens of federal grants ourselves, we’re well aware that government regulations and processes can feel onerous and inefficient. A thoughtful, wholesale review of agencies, programs and systems could reveal many opportunities for improvement.
But indiscriminate slashing of staff and programs is only going to worsen economic prospects, setting back the positive momentum many rural places have begun to experience since the pandemic. Reform can be valuable; destruction for its own sake is simply violence.
Ninety-two percent of affected respondents said they would need more non-federal grants and donations to make up for federal support. But philanthropy can’t fill this drastic funding gap. Rural places need game-changing investments in order to secure a diverse and robust economic future, and the federal government is a crucial partner in delivering them.
The Northern Forest Center will remain a steadfast partner to rural communities and to federal agency staff who deliver programs and funding across multiple administrations. We call on the current administration to reconsider its slashing of rural funding programs and the federal staff who deliver them — and ask the members of the region’s congressional delegation to be vocal and active in defending these resources.
