Local fundraisers helping Kentucky businesses survive COVID-19. Here’s how to help.

In lieu of flowers and a regular funeral service, the family of Robert Schosser, a native of Benham who died earlier this month, asked people on Facebook to donate to a historical inn in the former Harlan County coal camp to support it during the COVID-19 crisis.

Within days, the donations came flooding in. By Monday morning, they had raised nearly $5,400 on Facebook and an estimated $1,500 to $2,000 in paper checks that people mailed directly to the Benham Schoolhouse Inn.

The money comes at a crucial time. Since the novel coronavirus outbreak, the inn closed its restaurant and reduced its hotel staff from 17 to two. Its occupancy rate is a fraction of what it was before the outbreak.

Like any small business owner trying to make ends meet during coronavirus closures, C. Travis Warf, the president of the company that runs the inn, said he’s worried about how much debt he’ll incur and how long the economic shutdown will last.

“If the inn failed to exist it would have a severe detrimental impact on the entire community, the entire county,” Warf said. “With us being one of just a few lodging options in the area, it would be hard for anything to sustain that’s tied to tourism.”

The fundraiser is one of several community-driven efforts that have popped up across Eastern Kentucky since the COVID-19 outbreak. Together, they have raised tens of thousands of dollars that will be, or already have been, distributed to small business owners and individuals who have been particularly hard-hit by the economic shutdown.

One of the largest funds, the Southeast Kentucky Downtown Stimulus Fund, distributed its first round of funding last week: $102,000 of grants to 36 businesses across 20 eastern counties.

The stimulus fund will continue to review applicants from other businesses every week.

“We’re in the middle of an economic transition, and one of the biggest promising areas has been our entrepreneurs and small businesses that we’ve seen pop over the last five years,” said Lora Smith, executive director of the Appalachian Impact Fund, which manages the stimulus fund. “To then get hit like this is pretty devastating for the region because people are concerned we’re going to lose that momentum that we’ve been building.”

In a place like Eastern Kentucky, where it can be more difficult to find large philanthropic donors, the setback from the coronavirus could be especially difficult to recover from, Smith said.

While that fund has received support from a major donor, other funds are smaller in scale but have drawn substantial support since their creation. The Schoolhouse Inn fund will remain open for about a week.

“That’s going to go a long way toward our survival as a business,” Warf said. “The fact they’re doing that unsolicited, that completely touched my heart.”

The Benham Schoolhouse Inn, built in 1926 and opened as a hotel in 1994, sits on a hill overlooking the tiny Harlan County downtown. In addition to attracting tourists, the inn has become a meeting place for families that scattered across the country as the coal industry that supported the town fell away.

The Schosser family is one of those. Robert Schosser, a dermatologist, grew up in Benham but moved out of the area for higher education.

He made his career elsewhere, but regularly brought his family to the inn during their visits back home to Benham.

Matt Schosser, one of Robert Schosser’s sons who helped organized the fundraiser, said Benham became “kind of a second home” for him and his brother growing up, and the inn has played a crucial part in their visits.

“Without the inn, it would be very hard for us to have reunions,” Matt Schosser said.

Other small businesses, such as Read Spotted Newt, a bookstore in Hazard, have faced similar concerns since the COVID-19 outbreak.

One of the few bookstores in the region, Read Spotted Newt opened in January, got flooded in February, and closed because of coronavirus in March.

“There’s been a lot of obstacles,” said owner Mandi Sheffel, one of the grant recipients from the Southeast Kentucky Downtown Stimulus Fund.

While Sheffel has been successful selling books online — she carries titles from local authors that are sometimes hard to find, and people seem eager to support a local bookstore, she said — Sheffel also worries about how long her storefront will have to remain closed.

“It’s been a challenge,” she said. “But I’m trying to look at the positive, and the positive is that this will push me to go online ... and I think the grant will be instrumental in that.”

Other fundraising efforts have focused on families and individuals who have lost their jobs or had their hours cut because of the coronavirus.

The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, for example, is hosting three local foundations that are collecting donations for people in Perry, Floyd and Jackson counties.

The Hazard-Perry County fund has raised about $8,000 by selling signs and T-shirts, and through donations. The money will go directly to paying bills for people who have lost work or hours because of the coronavirus.

“We’re just really thankful that we have such a caring community, because this a hard time for everyone,” said Betsy Clemons, executive director of the Hazard-Perry County Chamber of Commerce. “That just shows how people in the mountains are, we’re just trying to take care of each other.”

Ricki Draper, a community organizer who helped launch a GoFundMe page to support individuals who are struggling to pay bills, has raised more than $7,000 in about two weeks.

The money has been distributed in installments of up to $200 directly to impacted families, including to those who have struggled to receive support from the state’s unemployment insurance system, Draper said.

“We know $200 for a family is not that much, but we’re hoping it can help, along with other sources of support,” she said.

So many people have applied through the GoFundMe page that the fund already has a waiting list of applicants.

“We really wanted to just get money in people’s hands who need it as quickly as possible,” Draper said. “And we know that a lot of government services or non-profit services can take time to get to people, and (there are) people who fall through the cracks in those services.”

This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 2:21 PM.