A grant that helped a Northern Virginia addiction recovery center offer resources to community members has been cut as part of cuts to federal spending.
Ginny Atwood, co-founder of The Chris Atwood Foundation, said she recently learned a multiyear, $200,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services has been “wiped out overnight.” It was COVID-related funding, Atwood said, and “they said COVID is over, so they took away that funding.”
Now, the Fairfax-based organization, which offers services to help people transition from active addiction to long-term recovery, is scrambling to figure out how to offset the loss of that money. The grant helped pay for the recovery community center and funded its recovery academy.
“We’re not going to turn the lights off tomorrow by any means, but we are definitely saying we’ve provided a lot of value to the community, and we’re really hoping the community can kind of give back a little,” Atwood said.
The consequence of not being able to find ways to cover the lost funding could mean, “We would potentially lose the recovery community center,” Atwood said.
Atwood said a lot of the federal funding was used to pay for rent for the recovery community center, which could be hard to get covered.
“Sometimes it can be challenging to recuperate funding for things like rent or administrative personnel, but these things are critical,” Atwood said. “You can’t have programming without the things that are the bedrock underneath of those programs.”
Given many of the federal funding cuts, Atwood said the group is looking toward community giving and nonfederal sources, “just given the climate of everything right now, we’re kind of diversifying the places that we’re looking to for help.”
The organization is planning a “Heroes for Hope” gala for Oct. 15, a fundraising campaign that offers awards for local recovery heroes, dinner and raffles.
“In order to be able to keep our lifesaving program at the level that it’s been, and hopefully grow it, we really are looking to our community to get involved and donate,” Atwood said.
The foundation is working on a potential new contract that has to be finalized and other fundraising opportunities.
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