50 Years of History
A Letter from Our President
Dear friends,
As we mark 50 years of partnership and investment in Appalachian communities, we’re taking time to reflect on the path we’ve shared together. This page spotlights moments from our journey—some joyful, some profound—all grounded in the resilience and ingenuity of Eastern Kentuckians. From our early days in the 1970s to the work we’re doing today, these snapshots tell the story of a nonprofit that has grown and adapted while navigating Appalachia’s ever-changing economic landscape. As we look back, we do so with gratitude and a continued commitment to the work ahead.
In 1976, Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) opened its doors with a bold vision for a new economy and a mission to strengthen communities. Focused on expanding local leadership and opening doors to opportunity, we launched our first loan fund —the Cumberland Fund— in the 1980s and dove into issues like clean water, housing, and the coal economy. The 1990s brought new programs like WINGS for women entrepreneurs and the founding of the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust.
As the 2000s rolled in, we fought predatory lending, developed new ways of supporting farmers, and launched our first energy savings program. In the 2010s we advanced our mission by helping shape policy through the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, ensuring that community voices influenced decisions, and we ramped up energy savings efforts by facilitating efficiency upgrades and solar installations across the region.
Throughout these decades, we’ve led and contributed to important discussions about what a bright future that includes all Eastern Kentuckians can and should look like. And today, as the Mountain Association, we’re still innovating—supporting small businesses, nonprofits, and local governments while we build a stronger, more resilient economy.
As we celebrate this milestone year, we’ll be sharing stories that highlight our impact and vision for the next 50 years. We know countless people have contributed to our journey and to the broader history of this work, and we warmly invite you to share your stories with us as we strive to tell the full story of the Mountain Association.
Sincerely,
Robin Gabbard, President
1970s
What was going on in Appalachia?
Throughout the 1970s, Appalachia and Eastern Kentucky experienced economic struggles as the coal industry, the region’s major industry, faced fluctuations due to declining demand and mechanization, leading to job losses and financial hardship. The decade also saw efforts to address poverty and living conditions, with federal programs like the Appalachian Regional Commission investing in infrastructure, healthcare, and education. Activism grew around labor rights and environmental issues, as miners fought for better wages and safety conditions while communities protested against strip mining and its effects on the land and water. Importantly, in 1977, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was enacted to regulate strip mining and promote land restoration.
What were we up to in 1976?
We were just getting started! We were formed in 1976 as the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, or MACED, by eight community development organizations in Eastern Kentucky and Southwest Virginia. Their goal was to establish an entity that could provide dependable economic development assistance to local efforts in the mountain regions and also undertake its own initiatives to generate locally based economic development. Most of these organizations had small budgets and could not maintain the skilled staff necessary to do the business development work essential to their local strategies, so MACED’s early work, provided by its two-person staff, was largely focused on assisting cooperatively owned businesses and community organizations.
With the Lilly Endowment providing $50,000 of support over MACED’s initial two years, our staff worked from the basement of Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation in London, though we moved the office to Short Street in Berea shortly after. As we grew according to community needs, our work became more multi-faceted, taking a nontraditional approach to economic development.
In some of our founding work, we described this broad view:
‘Jobs and business development are obviously important, and MACED has consistently put a lot of effort into this angle of economic development. However, in our mission to make the region’s economy serve low-income citizens better, we include a great deal in our purview besides jobs and businesses. The economy includes whatever wealth, benefits, and costs there are, and all the ways these get transferred to people. Some of these are public sector matters such as education, public utilities, and politics. Others, such as health care and housing, cross public-private lines. Many times the best – and only – way to ensure that people benefit is for people to organize to be sure their interests are taken into account, and so MACED also works with a number of citizen groups. Overall, we know that we must work on a variety of issues, by a variety of means.’
This carries true to Mountain Association’s work today.
What were we up to for the rest of the decade?
Through these early years our small staff was supporting businesses throughout Central Appalachia with in-depth business expertise. Bread and Chicken House—a cooperative bakery and restaurant run by low-income women in Big Stone Gap, Virginia—and Kentucky Hills Industries, a furniture and crafts producing cooperative in Whitley County, Kentucky—were two of MACED’s early technical assistance clients. With Bread and Chicken House, for example, we assisted them with everything from board training to improving productivity and setting up cost accounting systems.
In 1978, staff wrote MACED’s first publication, “Producing Handwoven Clothing on a Small Scale,” a result of technical assistance to an Eastern Kentucky weaver. The next year, because many of our clients were in the hardwoods industry, we launched a forest products initiative and published “Kiln Drying Hardwoods in Eastern Kentucky: An Analysis and Feasibility Study.”
As we began working with more and more businesses, staff quickly realized that fledgling and expanding businesses were unable to get enough financing from banks and other traditional sources. They began laying the groundwork for establishing our own financing program.
1980s
What was going on in Eastern Kentucky?
During the 1980s, Eastern Kentucky continued to struggle with economic hardship as the coal industry faced further decline due to automation and competition from other energy sources, leading to widespread unemployment and financial hardship. Efforts to diversify the economy, including federal and state investments in infrastructure and education, began, but many young people left in search of jobs.
Meanwhile, land and water protection concerns grew as strip mining expanded, sparking protests and legal battles, while coal miners also engaged in labor strikes to demand better wages and conditions. Women, especially miners’ wives, played an important role in the support of strikes, organizing marches and providing essential services to striking families. Notably, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled the broadform deed law unconstitutional in the late 1980s after grassroots advocacy. Historically coal companies had used these deeds to gain control over mineral rights, even if they didn’t own the surface land.
What were we up to from 1980 to 1984?
In 1981, Mountain Association, then known as MACED, established its own financing capacity – the Cumberland Fund, which was able to provide higher risk loans to new businesses. Much of our early support was in the forest products industry with clients like Century Hardwood, Rockcastle Lumber, B&H Toolworks, B&W Pallet, and several sawmills. In the early 80s, we also assisted with establishing a local sewing cooperative in Dungannon, Virginia, and helped 20 construction workers in Middlesboro, Kentucky form a cooperative to bid on larger projects.
In 1981, we also rented our first computer, which would allow us to replace the cash-flows staff had done by-hand on 13-column accounting paper! We soon began providing technical assistance to businesses focused on incorporating computers into their operations.
We began to look at mortgage availability and housing issues in these years as well. We formed the Eastern Kentucky Bankers Consortium for Mortgage Lending made up of 94 banks. We coordinated this as a vehicle to increase the flow of mortgage credit into Eastern Kentucky and to make mortgages more affordable for low and moderate income people, shepherding a $30 million mortgage revenue bond issue that was able to lower interest rates by 2 percent for the first 1,000 houses financed through the program. This work generated much recognition for innovation in structuring mortgages.
By 1984, water had emerged as a focal area for MACED with staff forming the Citizens Water Task Force of legislators, industry personnel, state regulatory officials, environmentalists and water system operators. We published key research on the topic with “Gaining Access to Drinkable Water in Rural Kentucky: Analysis of Small Water Systems in 21 Southeastern Counties” and “Drinking Water Health in Southeastern Kentucky” released the following year.
What were we up to from 1985 to 1989?
In the latter part of the decade, we were doing research into how the coal industry functioned at that time and policies that could increase coal’s positive contributions to the region—ultimately publishing a seven-volume series that continues to serve as a historic record of Kentucky coal and its impact on communities. In 1987, we issued the seventh report, which focused on how to support coal miners who had been laid off.
This work was so well-received that MACED received state funding to do public information work, issuing two booklets on the best practices for major layoffs for company management and for union officials, as well as a brochure on preparing for a layoff that we distributed to coal miners throughout the region. We also wrote a series of articles on “Life After Coal,” published in Kentucky’s coal county newspapers in spring 1988.
Throughout these years, we expanded our small business lending work with continued focus on the forest products sector and on businesses who could not access traditional loans. In 1985, we had $1,018,314 invested in Appalachian businesses, and by 1989, we had more than doubled that amount to $2,577,367. Today, we have a loan portfolio of more than $22 million!
At the same time as this important work, our staff were also working on issues like employer-supported childcare and other childcare research commissioned by the University of Kentucky. After research into educational outcomes in the region, we provided staffing for Forward in the Fifth, an independent organization dedicated to improving education in the Fifth District, championed by Congressman Hal Rogers.
Having outgrown our previous offices, in November 1989, we moved into our office at 433 Chestnut Street in Berea, where some of our staff continue to work to this day.
1990s
What was going on in Eastern Kentucky?
This decade saw a rise in mountaintop removal mining, leading to environmental concerns and legal battles over its impact on waterways and communities. Smaller coal companies were bought out by larger corporations, leading to further job losses as efficiency improvements and automation reduced the need for workers, and as air pollution standards became stricter. The Pittston Coal Strike carried over into 1990, with miners protesting cuts to health benefits and pensions. The opioid crisis also began to affect the region in the mid-1990s with a first wave of deaths due to a rise in overdoses involving prescription opioids.
What were we up to from 1990 to 1994?
In the early 1990s, MACED staff founded WINGS, or the Women’s Initiative Networking Groups, to assist women in starting businesses. Businesses started as a result of the program ranged from a ceramics studio and a greeting card business to an antique store, a doll pattern-making business, and a print shop. Gwen Christon, owner of Isom IGA, also participated in the program during her early days when she was a cashier at the store!
Alongside WINGS, we continued to provide expertise and technical assistance to business owners, along with supportive financing. From 1990 to 1994, we had an average annual loan portfolio balance of $2.53 million, representing critical investments in small businesses who could not access traditional financing.
Additionally, after a tract of old growth forest was discovered in Harlan County in the early 1990s, a group of conservationists formed the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust as a MACED program to protect the forest, along with other critical land in the Commonwealth. KNLT later became a stand-alone affiliate, and the Mountain Association continues to provide them back-office support today.
We were also working on projects that helped local citizens participate more fully in their local governments, with publications like “Beyond Voting” via the Kentucky Local Governance Project.
What were we up to from 1995 to 1999?
As more and more people were ‘getting online,’ this era saw the very first MACED website launched. Our staff continued to be heavily focused on support for entrepreneurs, so we also launched a website called BizFirstStop with small business management resources.
Beginning with our first loans in 1981, we steadily expanded our financing efforts each year, delivering critical investments to small businesses that lacked access to traditional capital. By 1997, our loan portfolio had grown to $2.47 million. This was a milestone year as it was also when we earned national recognition as one of only 200 organizations certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) by the U.S. Treasury. Today, that network has grown to roughly 1,462 CDFIs across the country, and we’re proud to have been among the early pioneers driving this movement.
At the core of what we called our Sustainable Communities Initiative, we were also helping form community-led action teams in 10 counties across Eastern Kentucky. The Owsley County Action Team formed independently in 1992. In the words of one team member: “We got tired of ‘being helped’ and decided to help ourselves.” When they learned of MACED’s initiative, they asked to be a pilot county and eventually became the prototype for how to succeed in this type of organizing. In their first few years, Action Team members started a Goat and a Vegetable Producers Association and the Owsley County Fund for Excellence, an education foundation. They revived the Booneville/Owsley County Industrial Authority, assisted in funding a downtown development office, and established a Business Mentoring Network. The action team’s work continues to this day.
Additionally, in these years, we established Communities by Choice, an online network of communities focused on sustainable development, to share all lessons learned, and we continued to work on the sustainable use of our forests. We supported the Forest Steward Council working group in developing their Appalachian standards, and created both a Forest Resource Model and Forest Vulnerability Model.
2000s
What were major changes happening in society and in Eastern Kentucky?
The internet continued to expand, with social media platforms like Facebook gaining popularity. Smartphones began to emerge, changing communication and access to information. The financial crisis of 2008, triggered by subprime mortgages, had a lasting impact on the world economy, while Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and other natural disasters highlighted the need for better disaster response and preparedness.
As the whole nation grappled with the events of 9/11 and subsequent war, Eastern Kentucky also dealt with significant flooding in 2001 and the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in the country. Coal worker productivity in the region began to drop and would continue to fall by about half from 2000 to 2012. Remaining coal was largely deep underground or within thinner seams requiring more labor and thus raising production costs.
What were we up to from 2000 to 2009?
Over this time, MACED’s business development program was testing several innovative products. We started offering Agricultural Diversification loans for small farmers in Appalachian Kentucky and technical assistance to promote farm diversification, value-added agriculture, and local food markets, earning national recognition for advancing rural economic opportunity by the Social Investment Forum Foundation and Co-op America. Over these years, our commercial lending portfolio also grew as we helped more and more businesses get off the ground. By the end of 2009, we had $8,341,183 in our loan portfolio, compared to $1,855,719 at the end of the previous decade.
We continued to run initiatives that supported entrepreneurs, including a FastTrac immersive business course, which graduated its first class in Paintsville in 2005. And, in 2008, following a troubling trend of skyrocketing utility rates in the region, we launched an energy savings program to help small business owners and nonprofit leaders find ways to save on their bills, which we continue to offer today.
Staff worked with the community on plans for Blanton Forest, the 1,075 acres of old growth forest we purchased in Harlan County in the 90s, holding town hall style planning sessions. We also continued our general work to support landowners on sustainable use of their resources, publishing the Kentucky Forest Landowner’s Handbook, a guide that remains popular today. Additionally, we established the Appalachian Carbon Partnership in 2007 which paid landowners for carbon dioxide that their trees remove from the atmosphere via the sale of carbon offsets to individuals, businesses and nonprofits. This program also helped 48 landowners certify 28,739 acres of forestland as sustainably managed.
With more than 170 payday lenders in our service area, payday loans and their high interest rates were taking advantage of many Eastern Kentuckians—a problem which continues today. In 2006, we established the Common Cents Financial Initiative, a demonstration project to combat predatory payday lending by providing access to small loans and savings accounts. Through the program, we made 410 loans totaling over $130,000 and generating savings accounts of over $66,000. As part of a coalition, we worked on legislation to cap the annual interest rate on payday loans. Our research and policy team also published several reports in the 2000s, including: Urgent Care: Financing and Health Care Provision in Appalachian Kentucky, Child Care in Appalachian Kentucky, and various reports on the economics of coal in Kentucky.
Our general community work continued with action teams across counties. Notably, we assisted with community planning in Wolfe County to guide their development strategies.
In 2004, we also opened an office in Prestonsburg office, though we later moved that location to Paintsville (we landed back in Prestonsburg in 2022!).
2010s
What was going on in Eastern Kentucky?
Overall, Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia faced even more significant economic challenges during this decade as the coal industry reached its final breaking point. The sharp decline was brought on by lower natural gas prices primarily due to the shale revolution, increasing utility-scale solar developments, and emissions regulations. The coal collapse led to job losses and population decline, further increasing poverty rates in the region. Kentucky also experienced a seven-fold increase in heroin overdose deaths in the first half of the decade. In 2017, the opioid crisis was declared a public health emergency.
Because coal was no longer economically viable, people began to come together around new ideas and form new partners. Shaping Our Appalachian Region, SOAR, was formed in 2013 in a bipartisan effort to revitalize the region. To complement this work, we helped establish the What’s Next East Kentucky grassroots network, made up of community and regional partners working to build collaboration across Eastern Kentucky. WNEKY continues to connect local leaders, lifts up successful ideas, and fosters relationships across county lines.
What were we up to from 2010 to 2019?
Throughout this decade, we continued to develop our energy savings work launched in 2008. In partnership with several rural electric cooperatives, we established a residential energy savings program called How$mart Kentucky, which works through an inclusive utility investment. This Pay-As-You-Save program has so far created more than $2.2 million in retrofits, representing jobs for contractors that wouldn’t otherwise happen. Each retrofit has freed up an average of $132 a year for families and the program has had a 99.5% cost recovery rate. The program has been successfully replicated in other states, especially for the Ouachita Electric Cooperative in Arkansas which was able to provide a 4.5% rate decrease after deploying the program.
We also began our New Energy Internship program in 2018, which trained individuals in Eastern Kentucky on energy efficiency and renewable energy work. Two of those former interns continue to be close partners in this work today, Fuzz Johnson, Master Electrician and Lead Solar Specialist at HOMES, Inc, and Ben Tatum, owner of Appalachian EnergyWorks. Since the formal internship, we have supported several other individuals and contractors in the region to complete solar certification and other critical programs. Also in 2018, we made a series of our first solar loans to nonprofits and businesses in Letcher County. The success of these solar installations in lowering people’s bills had a domino effect in the region as people learned from their neighbors about their experience and our support.
Today, we’ve facilitated more than 100 solar projects, representing $7.5 million in lifetime savings for small businesses, nonprofits, and local governments. In addition to solar, we’ve facilitated 280+ energy efficiency upgrades to date, which are bringing in another $1.3 million in annual savings.
Additionally, with the opening of our third office in Hazard in 2011, we began to do intensive place-based work, building on our history of community development. Throughout this time, we also began working in a more intentional way on storytelling and narrative change to inspire hope about the transition of the Appalachian economy. We published a key series of strategies on ways to ensure a just transition to a post-coal economy, which outlined equitable processes of shifting communities, workers, and industries away from coal dependence toward sustainable economic alternatives. Over the years, the momentum around “just transition” built, forming a national movement. Today, there are many leaders using the similar language and concepts to guide their communities as they navigate the decline of foundational economic sectors from coal to textiles, steel, and other key industries.
Throughout these years, we published reports like “Promoting Long-Term Investment in Appalachian Kentucky: A Permanent Coal Severance Tax Fund” and “Building Clean Energy Careers in Kentucky,” and partnered with the Kentucky Coalition for Responsible Lending to author a report on payday lending. In 2017, we published a paper on Community Benefits Agreements, which continues to be useful today as people in the Perry County area are considering CBAs as a tool to advocate for communities as large solar farms move into Appalachia.
As we engaged in more policy work, MACED formally launched the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy in 2011. Now called Ky Policy, they have grown to 10 staff doing research and advocacy on the most pressing state budget and policy challenges—from education and healthcare to tax reform and criminal justice. In 2020, they became an affiliate of the Mountain Association and we continue to provide back office support today.
Our small business lending work also steadily grew across this decade, and in 2019 we had $19.4 million in our portfolio, compared to $8.3 million in 2009.
2020s
What was going on in society?
By 2020, the world experienced significant shifts influenced by the pandemic and the rise of social justice movements. These changes include increased focus on healthcare, shifts in work patterns, and conversations about issues like race, gender, and climate change.
What were we up to from 2020 to 2025?
As we entered the pandemic, we were also in the midst of an expansive strategic planning process. In August 2020, we released our new strategic plan and changed our name from MACED to the Mountain Association with the goal of becoming more accessible to our communities.
We became a Paycheck Protection Program lender in 2021, which were fully-forgivable federal loans to help businesses and organizations through financial strain caused by COVID. Though we had been connecting clients with an accountant to help them apply for PPP loans, people in the region were still having a difficult time working through commercial lenders. In just a few months, we processed 409 loans and deployed more than $6 million through loans averaging about $15,000 per borrower. From a truck drivers union, to self-employed electricians and plumbers, to musicians and museums, these loans helped small businesses and sole proprietors continue to meet vital needs throughout the pandemic.
We also launched a SPARK Nonprofit Collaborative to support very small nonprofits with peer-to-peer learning opportunities and resources. Participants leveraged SPARK training, coaching, and peer learning to secure over $500,000 in new funding. This includes successful grant applications, donor engagement strategies, and new partnerships. Cross-county conversations seeded partnerships that are continuing beyond SPARK, including joint grant applications, resource-sharing, and mutual support networks among nonprofits that once worked in isolation.
while Small General Service/Medium General Service (small businesses) increased 129% and 151%, respectively. Additional charges are calculated as demand rates, which increased by 836% for Small General Service and 621% for Medium.
Our Energy Team continued to be busy throughout these years not only with technical energy savings work, but with intervening Public Service Commission cases in order to advocate for energy affordability for Eastern Kentucky residents, businesses, and organizations. In 2021, our efforts lead to major decision by the PSC to uphold solar net metering. One of Kentucky’s largest utilities, Kentucky Power, sought to reduce the benefits of net metering for its customers by lowering the rate from the current one-to-one credit to substantially less. The case also included the company’s third request to increase rates within five years and rate structure changes that discouraged energy efficiency measures. Partnering with Kentuckians for Energy Democracy, we launched a communications campaign to solicit public comments and pushed the PSC for virtual hearings. Additionally, our experts provided formal testimony and cross-examination. The result: a smaller rate increase and preserved net metering. Since then, we’ve continued intervening in rate cases to defend the most energy cost-burdened counties in Kentucky.
In July 2022, 14 counties in Eastern Kentucky were decimated by an historic flood, dealing a major setback in revitalization momentum. This flood came on top of significant flooding in 2020 and 2021. After the flood, we deployed $1,184,766 in capital to support recovery. Our teams have continued to be busy with responding to needs resulting from repeated flooding, innovating services and opportunities that equip small businesses, nonprofits, and local governments with what they need to thrive.
At the end of 2025, we had more than $22 million in our loan portfolio, representing critical investment in Appalachian small businesses and organizations.
Today
In 2025, our staff and board dedicated time to developing a new strategic plan to take us through 2030. This process involved examining our role in the region, having critical discussions about what we are seeing in our communities, and identifying key shifts we need to make with our work to meet current and predicted challenges in the coming years.
For 50 years, the Mountain Association has been a leader in demonstrating what a regenerative and diversified economy can look like in Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. This work has yielded lasting, positive outcomes for many individuals and communities over the last five decades, but still too many people in our region face significant hardships.
This five-year plan year reflects the core challenges that people are facing today, including cost of living increases, affordable housing shortages, lack of affordable quality childcare in our region, and the many impacts of extreme weather.
We invite you to explore this plan as both a guide to understanding what we are doing today and as a call to action to join us in shaping a brighter future in Appalachia.
Additionally, in Fall 2026, we will share a report that dives into our impact over these 50 years and into our vision for the next 50 years.
