Jul. 30—The New Mexico-based Women’s Economic Self-Sufficiency Team, or WESST, announced Tuesday it will close two of its offices, relocate one and cut a quarter of its staff amid federal funding uncertainty.
WESST President Lindsey Kay said the organization may lose up to $2 million in funding from various federal agencies, including the Minority Business Development Agency — which the Trump administration significantly reduced in April — and the Small Business Administration, which is eliminating 43% of its workforce after federal cuts.
WESST offers training, microlending and consulting services to small businesses statewide. At the beginning of October, the organization will close its offices in Rio Rancho and Santa Fe and relocate its Roswell office to Hobbs. The closures will eliminate around eight staff positions, Kay said.
The nonprofit will continue to serve its clients across the state by switching to a “more mobile” service model, she said. The Farmington, Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Hobbs offices will remain open.
The status of federal funding — which makes up over half of WESST’s budget — is constantly in flux, Kay said. Much of the money is frozen in grants that have not yet been disbursed, she said, so the organization doesn’t know exactly how much money it may lose — but is preparing for the worst.
“There’s limited information around how this is all going to play out,” Kay said. “The nonprofit sector as a whole is just really feeling the impact of these rapid, sweeping changes, and we’re doing the best that we can to remain agile.”
The cuts at the SBA are part of a “strategic reorganization” by the Trump administration, the agency announced in a March news release. SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said in a statement at the time that the agency had strayed from its original mission of supporting small businesses and turned into a “sprawling leviathan plagued by mission creep, financial mismanagement and waste.”
Kay said the consolidation and reorganization of WESST is to make sure the nonprofit is “ensuring that we’re protecting the integrity of the organization and being mindful of the precarity of our funding landscape.”
“We’re still here to serve the same people we always have, and that’s what we’re putting as our top priority,” Kay said.