On refrigerator doors across Floyd County, amidst the grocery lists and grandchildren' s drawings, a small magnet will soon do a big job. It will carry a QR code that connects older residents to the essential contact information and websites they need the next time floodwater starts rising. All thanks to the efforts of a retired schoolteacher with no grant experience who learned, with Grant Ready Kentucky’s help, to find, write, and win funding for her community in less than a year.
A new job, and a surprise
Jeanie Howard spent 25 years as an elementary school teacher in Magoffin County Schools. After Jeanie retired, a friend told her about an AmeriCorps VISTA position with the Floyd County Fiscal Court in Prestonsburg, and the idea appealed to her right away. "I really like to work with people," she says. "I enjoy working with the community and helping anyone as far as anything they need."
Jeanie became the county's Stewards VISTA-Community Development Coordinator, based in the office of the county judge-executive. Her focus was flooding. Floyd County had been hit by severe floods and disasters again and again from 2021 through 2025, and her job was to find resources to help the community recover and prepare.
What she didn't know going in was how much of that work would mean grants: searching for them, working on them, and writing them.
"At first I was very nervous," Jeanie says. "I wasn't sure about anything to do with grants. I knew they existed, and I knew that they are out there, but I wasn't sure where to go from there."
Moving from the classroom into local government was a big change, and flood recovery meant working with agencies like FEMA and NRCS. "I wanted everything to be right," she says. "I wanted to go out there and get those funds for the community, and I didn't want to make any mistakes."
The coach she'd already met
Jeanie had actually met her future grant coach before her first day on the job. Ruthie Caldwell, a grant coach with Grant Ready Kentucky (GRKY) who already worked with the Fiscal Court, sat on the panel that interviewed Jeanie for the VISTA position.
"I just thought she was somebody working with the Fiscal Court at the time," Jeanie says. "I didn't realize what help she was going to be to me in the future."
After Jeanie was hired, Ruthie reached out to let her know she was there if Jeanie needed anything. She also recommended a two-day GRKY grant-writing workshop at an upcoming gathering.
Walking in nervous, leaving confident
About three weeks into the job, Jeanie arrived at the Brushy Fork gathering in Berea for GRKY's workshops, led by Chief Strategy Officer Melissa Vermillion.
"I walked in, I was new, I was nervous, had my backpack on my back with my laptop in it," Jeanie recalls. But Melissa put her at ease, starting with the basics, including which websites to register on and how to get set up. Jeanie also created her first LinkedIn account and left with a network of new partners.
"By the end of the first day, I was getting it. I was like, ‘Hey, I think I can do this!’” says Jeanie. “The second day, I left really confident." She also left knowing she could call on GRKY whenever questions came up. "I had a lot of questions, believe me," she says.
Back in Prestonsburg, Ruthie's coaching began in earnest. Ruthie sent grant timelines, suggested funder-friendly wording, and gave Jeanie her personal phone number and email.
Thinking big, starting small
Then Ruthie sent Jeanie a list of possible grants.
"I had looked over and I was thinking big, all the big grants," Jeanie says. But one opportunity stood out: a $2,500 microgrant through the AARP Community Challenge. "I looked at it, and I'm like, you know what? I need to start small and work my way up."
She checked with Ruthie and her supervisor, Missy Allen, who both told her to go for it. Then Jeanie got to work. "I stayed really late in my office evenings, making sure everything was exactly the way it should be," she says. Before submitting in February, she had both Ruthie and Missy Allen review the application.
Then she waited.
That spring, the news came: Floyd County Fiscal Court had won. The project was one of just 15 in Kentucky selected for AARP Community Challenge funding in 2026.
An idea worth borrowing
The idea behind the project came from a conversation with partners at Frontier Housing, which had recently cut the ribbon on higher-ground housing for flood survivors. Jeanie and Frontier Housing Program Specialist Darya Francis were talking about what would actually help people in a disaster: something simple, not something big or hard to use.
Darya mentioned that where she’s from, people kept fridge magnets printed with important phone numbers on them. Jeanie saw a way to bring the idea up to date. "I thought, you know what? We don't have time for phone numbers, but we do have time for a QR code." Darya liked the new twist on her idea.
The result will be a magnet with a QR code that links to a Google Site Jeanie built, packed with disaster information, important numbers, and websites for Floyd County's older residents.
Jeanie knows a magnet only works if people can use it, and that's where her teaching background comes in. She will lead a series of classes at senior centers across Floyd County, showing older residents how to use their phones and tablets and how to scan a QR code. There will be three classes of instruction. At the fourth, she'll reveal the magnet.
"By the fourth class, they're going to understand, and they're going to be able to use that QR code," she says. The grant covers all of it: the classes, the design, and the printing.
"$2,500 doesn't sound like a lot," Jeanie says, "but it's going to go a long way."
From $2,500 to $3 million
Starting small worked. Now Jeanie is working her way up.
“It all connects through Floyd County Fiscal Court, through Ruthie, of course, but it’s through flooding,” she says. “When I started my VISTA service last year, I knew I was going to be working in flooding, and I didn’t know the avenue it was going to take me to.”
That avenue kept getting wider. Ruthie had helped Floyd County—with partners including Mountain Association, BRECC (Building Resilient Economies in Coal Communities), and the Central Appalachian Network—secure a $100,000 Climate Smart Community Initiative planning grant before Jeanie arrived. Part of Jeanie’s job was to move the grant forward by developing three plans that can be used to apply for future implementation grants for a community resilience hub, flood mitigation, and higher-ground housing. Jeanie’s role was hands-on. She created and distributed community surveys, supported an Ohio University mapping project where residents identified safe places and flood-prone roads, and coordinated three community gatherings. She also organized a “Mapping Our Future” event that brought local and state government and nonprofit partners into one room. Ruthie showed up for that event too.
The planning grant wrapped up in August 2026. Now Jeanie is part of the team working toward the next step: a roughly $3 million resilience hub on a higher-ground site, a place for people to go the next time disaster strikes.
The magnet helps residents get through a flood. The hub will give them a safe place to go. “Those two just kind of pair together,” Jeanie says.
“You have to have help”
In about a year, Jeanie went from winning a $2,500 microgrant she wrote herself, to a $100,000 grant she helped coordinate, to a seat at the table planning a $3 million project. The Fiscal Court has asked her back for a second VISTA term, and she’s already watching for the next grant that fits Floyd County.
Her advice to anyone wondering whether to reach out to GRKY is short: “Why not? Give it a try. What’s it going to hurt?”
Then she adds the part she learned firsthand: “You can’t just jump in this grant writing thing and say, ‘I’m going to do this,’ because you can’t. You have to have help.” For Jeanie, help was always close by. “All I had to do was ask, shoot an email. That was it.”
A year ago, she was a retired teacher who knew grants existed but not where to begin. Before this year is out, she’ll be back in front of a classroom, this time at a senior center, teaching older neighbors how to access lifesaving information. When the next flood comes to Floyd County, the help they need will already be hanging on their refrigerators, and—with a little more legwork and luck—a safe place will be waiting for them on higher-ground.