Organizations face uncertainty about what the future holds
The impact of job terminations and federal funding freezes under the administration of President Donald Trump could be significant in Blaine County, where the nonprofit sector is a major component of the economy.
However, for many charitable organizations in the Wood River Valley, it is too soon to tell how contracts with fired federal workers and cuts to federal funding—which have been challenged in court—will impact their operations. Several declined to comment.
According to the Washington, D.C., think tank Urban Institute, there are 25 organizations filing 990 nonprofit tax forms in Blaine County that collectively rely on $5,902,321 in government grants. Forty percent of these nonprofits have government grants at risk of being cut.
CNBC reported on Feb. 23 that the purge of federal workers, estimated at 300,000, could be the “biggest job cut in U.S. history,” with impacts felt most acutely at the “local level.”
Spur Community Foundation Executive Director Sally Gillespie said 82 nonprofits that “actively serve” the Wood River Valley community across a wide variety of sectors logged $30 million in payroll in 2023, employing 1,143 individuals.
Trout Unlimited, a national organization with projects in the Sawtooth National Forest and the Wood River Valley, has an ongoing $40 million national initiative to increase the scale of stream restoration and improve habitat for trout and salmon species. Trout Unlimited works closely with the U.S. Forest Service, from which thousands of workers were recently fired.
The nonprofit’s initiatives in the Wood River Valley along the Big Wood River and at Bassett Gulch in the Sawtooth Valley were made possible by federal funds provided by the 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. Project goals include restoring habitat for native Redband trout and Wood River sculpin, both of which are listed as “species of long-term concern” by the state of Idaho.
The Trump administration called to “immediately pause the disbursement of funds” from the IRA legislation under an executive order titled “Terminating the Green New Deal.”
Trout Unlimited declined to comment on the possible impacts that federal job terminations, funding cuts or possible changes to contracts with federal workers could have on its regional operations.