Vance’s Rust Belt-focused nonprofit group to be dissolved after minimal success

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), is seeking to dissolve a charity he formed after he published his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which has since been adapted into a movie.

He created two nonprofit groups in 2016 to address problems in his home state of Ohio and other Rust Belt states. The two charities were largely supposed to address the opioid crisis, a lack of job opportunities, and lacking mental health treatment.

Vance has been criticized for their lack of success. The original organization folded within five years and Vance put the other on hold when he ran successfully for the Senate in 2022. One of their only notable achievements was paying to send an addiction specialist to southern Ohio for a year who had questioned the well-documented role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis. 

He’s acknowledged that they fell short of his aspirations. One of the groups filed paperwork in April reinstating the corporate status it had allowed to expire in 2022.

Trump-Vance campaign spokeswoman Taylor Van Kirk told the Associated Press that filing was required because the foundation still had money left in its bank account and did not signal that Vance intended to resume the foundation’s efforts. She said he plans to close out its accounts and distribute the remaining balance, $11,000, to causes benefiting Appalachia.

The main reason the groups failed to catch on is because a key organizer was diagnosed with cancer. The first foundation, Our Ohio Renewal, reported raising $221,000 in 2018, $80,000 of which was Vance’s own money. It raised less than $50,000 the following year before being shut down in 2021, records show.

The Our Ohio Renewal Foundation, the second charity, appears to have raised and spent only about $69,000 from 2017 to 2023.

Vance has been under heavy fire since becoming Trump’s running mate. Many have criticized him for his past comments about women and others without children.

Democratic running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), has faced different attacks. Republicans have painted him as a far-left governor who failed to protect Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots.