West Virginia Loses Critical Workforce Development and Cultural Heritage Tourism Opportunities Amid Defunding of Statewide Preserve WV AmeriCorps Program

Approximately 250 AmeriCorps members serving in West Virginia were told to stop serving by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. This included all twenty-two members serving at twenty historic sites within the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia’s Preserve WV AmeriCorps program - the statewide national service initiative where AmeriCorps members helped main streets thrive, cultivated cultural heritage tourism, and preserved beloved West Virginia history. Grant funds were used solely to pay members' service stipend.  Donate today to help Preserve WV AmeriCorps members finish their service years!

For the past 12 years, the Alliance coordinated the Preserve WV AmeriCorps program to assist the state’s nonprofits and public agencies charged with stewarding and preserving their community’s cultural resources, as well as providing cultural heritage tourism opportunities and educational services. Many public agencies have been expected to care for our historic buildings and artifacts for decades with minimal budgets and no staff making it extremely challenging for them to meet their missions and provide educational programs to local community residents and cultural heritage tourists. By facilitating the placement of AmeriCorps members, these agencies could bring in skilled, motivated individuals from within the community or from as far away as California, to ensure the state’s historic resources were cared for to the best standards while also engaging community residents of all ages and tourists from around the world to learn about our state and local history. 

Now, the state’s historic sites, ranging from Matewan to Charles Town, Wheeling to Lewisburg and many places in-between, must figure out how to maintain historic resources and continue providing services despite the sudden loss of AmeriCorps support through Preserve WV. Sites are having to adjust quickly while also experiencing additional loss of income from grant funding from important agencies like the West Virginia Humanities Council. Thomas Jude of the Matewan Mine Wars Museum, where one member was serving through Preserve WV, explains “The unexpected loss of our AmeriCorps Member (Candace) immediately reduces our capacity to host student tours. Newly announced education programs she was set to lead now face cancellation. Her departure forces staff to absorb critical project work, stretching our already limited capacity. Community-service projects coordinated with the Town of Matewan will likely be cancelled as well.” 

Preserve WV had already planned to reduce its program in the coming year from 22 to 15 members in order to align with the new administration’s goals, selecting sites that were severely limited in capacity and available resources. Of the 15 entities proposed to be site sponsors in the coming program year, one site was entirely volunteer-managed, five had 1 paid staff, three sites had 2-4 paid staff, four sites had 5 paid staff, and two were state agencies with 6 or 8 paid staff members. Collectively, over 50 historic buildings are in their care, and one agency, where multiple members were expected to serve, manages thousands of acres with numerous undocumented historic structures not currently counted. Since these sites are heavily dependent on community volunteers, an often aging and shrinking population, and public funding with varying degrees of reliability, AmeriCorps members provide more consistency for sites to engage with their community members and leverage resources and preservation incentives. With no other mechanism to support these organizations other than the Alliance, they are limited in their abilities to deal with deferred maintenance of significant resources leading many entities to want to demolish resources for perceived practicality. However, demolishing historic resources in rural communities signals decline and can lead to further disinvestment through the erosion of unique character, disruption of the streetscape, loss of heritage tourism and adaptive reuse potential, as well as loss of embodied energy. While preservation, on the other hand, offers long-term benefits by stabilizing property values, creating economic opportunities, and fostering community pride. 

Kara Gordon, site supervisor at the Cockayne Farmstead in Marshall County, served with Preserve WV for two terms prior to becoming their full-time site manager. As Kara explained, “The Marshall County Historical Society has hosted Preserve WV AmeriCorps members since the program began in 2013.  Before we could employ permanent staff members and were working solely with volunteers, AmeriCorps members helped to establish the farmhouse as a museum in so many ways, cataloging the collection, doing outreach to the community, and pioneering many of the programs we continue to this day.  This year, we were excited to have two amazing AmeriCorps members, one at the Cockayne Farmstead and one at our other facility, the Marshall County History Museum, which previously was only sporadically volunteer-operated.  The improvements he had been making at that site were incredible, and, above all, established consistency there for the first time since its opening.  The extremely sudden loss of our AmeriCorps members will drastically stunt the capacity of our organization.  We will have to immediately reduce the number of programs we offer, the number of hours we are open to the public, and the progress we had made in digital content creation in hopes of opening other avenues to continue to sustain our sites and reach a wider audience.” 

Faith Walker, director of the Great Bend Museum said on the issue, “We rely on AmeriCorps for critical staffing needs. Without it, we will have to find a way to get by on a reduced capacity, which means fewer public programs and exhibits, longer waits for research assistance, and potentially reduced open hours. We depend on AmeriCorps to help us meet our mission; we simply won’t be able to sustain that loss for long without noticeable effects on our operations and programs.” 

“Not only will the sites and communities suffer from this unexpected and sudden loss of AmeriCorps members, but the individuals serving in these positions are hurt as they no longer are receiving their modest stipend they received during service, as well as a critical workforce development opportunity for the state,” said Danielle Parker, Executive Director of the Alliance. Preserve WV was a launching point for over 240 individuals pursuing careers in the public history or community development fields, as well as retirees wanting to continue providing meaningful service where they live. Many of these members now have successful careers as the directors of historic sites, working for state agencies like the State Historic Preservation Office, and working in archives like at the State Museum. One example of one young person who stayed in the state because of the AmeriCorps programs is the Alliance’s own preservation manager, Jamie Billman. After serving two terms in the AmeriCorps with the Preserve WV program, Jamie started as the Preservation Manager in 2021 and has been working since then to help AmeriCorps members have meaningful experiences like she had. Billman loves working one-on-one with members to make sure they receive educational opportunities during their service.. “I don’t know what I’d have done without the Preserve WV AmeriCorps Program,” Billman said, “I graduated with my Master’s during Covid and not many places were hiring, and the Alliance gave me a foot in the door into the field I wanted to work in. I am forever grateful for that.”

The road ahead for the Alliance and the sites they have assisted for over a decade is a difficult one, but they do remain hopeful and committed. Parker explained, “Many communities already recognize the impact these cuts are going to have locally, and they are responding to try to figure out ways to keep the positions intact in some way. Members are trying to find other jobs, but some are hoping to volunteer for the time being while searching for work to continue the programs they had planned. Although public funding that nonprofits rely on is being cut in all directions, including AmeriCorps and the Community Development Block Program, we are mobilizing and strategizing. Our local residents and businesses recognize how important our work is, even if the new administration does not agree. We are working together to figure out how to rise above this.” 

The Alliance is saddened by the cut of not only our AmeriCorps members but all 32,000 that were cut nationwide. The long-term ramifications of this decision by DOGE will be felt in every state, particularly in vulnerable communities and sites that relied on these services. Currently, over two dozen states are engaged in legal battles against the DOGE decision. Although West Virginia declined to participate, the organizations whose grants were terminated hope they can at least finish out their program year, scheduled to end in December. Then they could plan for the future in a more measured way.

The Preservation Alliance of West Virginia is the grassroots, statewide nonprofit dedicated to historic preservation. It has also successfully administered other programs funded by the federal government including its Saving Historic Places Grants and the Fund for Historic Schools. Learn more at www.pawv.org.

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A full list of current Preserve WV AmeriCorps site sponsors affected by this program termination are:
1.    Arthurdale Heritage (Preston County)
2.    Clarksburg History Museum (Harrison County)
3.    Cockayne Farmstead (Marshall County)
4.    Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex (Marshall County)
5.    Great Bend Museum (Jackson County)
6.    Greenbrier Historical Society
7.    Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission
8.    Main Street Ripley (Jackson County)
9.    Marshall County Historical Society
10.  Monongahela National Forest Heritage Department
11.  Monroe County Historical Society
12.  Morgantown History Museum (Monongalia County)
13.  National Coal Heritage Area
14.  Northern Appalachian Coal Mining Heritage Association (Marion County)
15.  Preservation Alliance of West Virginia (statewide)
16.  Ritchietown Renaissance (Ohio County)
17.  Rivers to Ridges Heritage Trail
18.  West Virginia Humanities Council (statewide, based in Kanawha County)
19.  West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
20.  World Scouting Museum (Kanawha County)