Exactly 13 months ago, Hope Renovations in Carrboro was hosting a special guest: the acting U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Julie Su. She visited the award-winning nonprofit to see firsthand the efforts being supported by a $713,000 grant from her office’s Women in Apprenticeships and Non-Traditional Occupations (WANTO) initiative.
The goal of the funding was to address workforce shortages by diversifying, specifically by tapping into an underutilized part of the population – women – to address the needs.
“When you draw from communities who have been left out for too long,” Su said from Hope Renovations’ workshop, “and you recognize their power, their potential, their drive, their hunger and you give them [an] opportunity, people can do anything. We’re talking about women and women of color working in construction — something we’ve underutilized in this country for too long. And now the combination of [President Joe Biden’s] vision [to] build infrastructure to this community-based organization demonstrating how it’s done is [exciting.]”
Hope Renovations CEO and Founder Nora Spencer (right) stands with then-acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su (middle) during a tour of the nonprofit’s Carrboro workshop on May 17, 2025. (Photo via Hope Renovations on Facebook.)
But now, it is a very different story for the award-winning nonprofit and the federal department – as the latter recently eliminated a key federal grant for the former. President Donald Trump’s administration feels differently than Su and the Biden administration – with the Department of Government Efficiency effectively cutting all of the WANTO grant program recipients’ funding in May.
“Unfortunately,” said Hope Renovations CEO and founder Nora Spencer, “the bots found us – they found the words in our grant application that were specific the genders we serve and work with, and the underserved populations…and, yeah, unexpectedly on a Wednesday afternoon [we] got the email that the grant was gone.
“We all lost our grant funding,” Spencer said of the other WANTO recipients, “and now we’re all collectively trying to figure out next steps to fight this.”
In addition to the loss of the grant program, current U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Trump administration are aiming to shut down the Women’s Bureau – the agency which distributed the WANTO funding. The budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year called it an “ineffective policy office that is a relic of the past,” which several lawmakers and unions have pushed back on.
Spencer argued that efforts like Hope’s are needed now more than ever, considering the projected decline of the construction industry’s workforce and high demand for projects. And the nonprofit has been effective: nearly 75% of the program’s 160 graduates have gone on to jobs in the trades or continued their trade education.
Members of Hope Renovations’ apprenticeship program go through an industry-recognized training curriculum in order to establish the skills and knowledge needed to pursue careers in a variety of trades. (Photo via Hope Renovations on Facebook.)
But Spencer also pushed back on the Trump administration and DOGE characterizing support for her nonprofit as “wasteful.” Empowering women through the training program and helping change their lives with apprenticeships not only collectively helps the region but helps them individually, she argued.
“The people that were coming to us from our community – single moms, women coming out of recovery programs, or coming out of criminal justice situations,” said the Hope Renovations CEO, “[had] all kinds of employment barriers. We were helping them resolve these barriers and then get into these carriers where they can make living wages and support their families – sometimes – for the first time in their whole life.
“That’s what we’ve been doing,” Spencer said, “and if anybody thinks that’s wasteful, I’d love to have a chat with you.”
Since its funding was cut, the Hope Renovations team has been doing just that – with Spencer traveling to Washington D.C. in recent days to speak with Congressional representatives alongside the Orange-Chatham Association of Realtors and lobby for the WANTO program’s importance. The nonprofit also launched a fundraising call to supporters and newcomers to their cause, asking for help to fund the gap left by the federal money being taken away.
While the initial response had helped cover roughly 15% of that amount by the start of June, Spencer said there is a long way to go. The grant had little more than $300,000 left, which she said is a third of the program’s budget for the year — and represents 20 cohorts of trainees in Hope Renovations apprenticeship program.
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Hope Renovations CEO Talks Ways to ‘Fight’ After Federal Funding Deemed ‘Wasteful’ by Trump Administration Chapelboro.com.
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