Partner With Us

Our team brings the deep, cross-disciplinary expertise that is necessary to effectively support coal communities through transition. We draw on a broad knowledge base—including rural economic development, community planning, climate and energy solutions, and broadband infrastructure—while grounding our work in the specific cultures and economic realities of the communities we serve. This approach ensures that our strategies are both technically sound and locally relevant.

Since our inception, the JTF has helped our partners leverage $2.6B in public investment. This investment has allowed hard-hit coal communities to create or retain nearly 30,000 jobs, train and support over 44,000 workers and entrepreneurs, create more than 1,200 new businesses, and connect nearly 63,000 households to the internet. Learn more about our impact.

We have build a bipartisan network of coal transition stakeholders that allows us to bridge divides and make progress where it’s needed most. This includes frontline community leaders, federal agencies, state and local officials, and private sector partners. With a commitment to local decision-making to create shared prosperity in the places hit hardest by coal’s decline, we’ve built trust on the ground across the political spectrum.

Our data-driven approach, combined with our deep respect for communities, enables us to have an outsized impact. Through our signature “prioritization project,” we measure the energy transition-related distress in individual communities, using data related to the intensity of coal impacts, economic indicators, and demographic metrics gathered from a diverse set of sources. Our analysis identifies the most economically distressed coal communities with the most disadvantaged populations.

We anticipate and address systemic opportunities at key moments in time. With our bird’s eye view of the field and a deep understanding of coal communities, we build programs that fill essential gaps for our partners. Standout examples include our National Economic Transition Initiative, which helped inform new federal policies under the Biden Administration that set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for America’s energy communities. Our Federal Access Center helped communities leverage this historic moment and access $2.6B in federal grants to plan for closures and grow local economies. And in 2025, we launched our latest initiative, the Local Economy Lab, to help successful, community-led projects keep their momentum and secure further investment as they scale up.