It would take many pages just to summarize the shocks and debacles that 2025 brought to Carolina Common Enterprise, as with all of the United States. In particular, the newly-inaugurated regime gutted USDA Rural Development without Congressional authorization. Our friends and colleagues at Rural Development were laid off or forced into retirement. Our bread-and-butter funding, the Rural Cooperative Development Grant (RCDG) program, was terminated, then reinstated last-minute under new conditions that prevented us from receiving our annual funding. The related Socially Disadvantaged Group Grant program simply disappeared. CCE is a skeletal organization, just the two of us keeping the work progressing. Things are terrible.

            In that light, we are extraordinarily grateful to the people who worked together to counteract all of these developments. First, the many people who donated directly to CCE provided funds to keep us going through the end of the year. Our beloved colleagues in cooperative development centers around the country, through CooperationWorks, the National Cooperative Business Association, and the Cooperative Development Foundation, came together mightily to keep RCDG funds directed toward cooperatives.

            The Rochdale Pioneers succeeded for one other reason not mentioned above: steadfast determination. That work was so hard, they faced tremendous adversity, yet they stuck with it. Carolina Common Enterprise is sticking with it. We have hope for the future, and so should you.