Metrolina Association for the Blind Faces Shortfall After Grant Program Terminated

Max Kimpson remembers the moment when he realized something was wrong with his vision.

It was the summer of 1985 and he was a freshman at Morehouse College. He and some friends were playing football on the green when a pass came his way. He remembers how it left his field of view despite being right in front of him. 

“All of a sudden, I saw the ball, it disappeared, and then I saw it again,” he recalled. “That’s when I knew something had happened … something was going on.” 

That something would turn out to be retinitis pigmentosa, which refers to a group of inherited eye diseases that affect the retina and cause a progressive loss in vision over time, though he would go misdiagnosed for years before learning the true condition that affected him. 

Kimpson would go on to graduate and work with the federal government for 27 years — first at the National Institutes of Health then the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2023, he was forced into early retirement after his vision regressed to the point where he no longer felt he could do his job effectively. 

He was living in Charlotte by that time, having moved south during COVID, where he became involved with Metrolina Association for the Blind. The organization has changed his life since then through its training and peer support, allowing him more independence than he has ever known during his adult life. 

“It was immediately a lifeline for me because I didn’t have these tools before,” he said. “I was stuck stumbling around at home in the house, and you become a little isolated because I don’t want to ask my wife or my kids to do everything. This way, with the resources and the help that I received, now I can walk independently.” 

Metrolina Association for the Blind (MAB), which marked its 91st birthday in June with a celebration at its longtime facility on Louise Avenue in the Elizabeth neighborhood, has helped countless clients like Kimpson live more independently over generations of service. 

The organization now faces a period of transition, however, after learning earlier this year that a grant from the county that had provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to MAB wouldn’t be coming this year. 

Facing a $29-million budget gap going into the Fiscal Year 2026 budget-making process, Mecklenburg County terminated its Community Service Grant program, which had provided more than $2 million to organizations like MAB that provide health care services to vulnerable populations. 

MAB was awarded $340,000 in each of the last two fiscal years and this year had applied for more than double that as the need for its services continues to grow in the Charlotte area. 

Leadership at the organization had hoped they would receive the original amount of $340K even if denied the extra. They had met all the necessary metrics laid out by the county, so learning that the entire program would be cut this year was a shock to them. 

“When you apply for a grant, there’s no guarantees with anyone that you’re going to receive the funds — none,” said Tracy Libertino, CEO and president at MAB. “So we’re always mindful of the fact that we’re going to have to adapt if that’s the case … The challenge is, in Charlotte, the need here is growing exponentially but the funds aren’t.” 

MAB served 1,320 individuals in 2024. Libertino estimates that the community service grant helped the organization reach around 600 more people than it could have otherwise.  

There are currently hundreds of people awaiting services on the organization’s waiting list. When the list gets that large, they stop adding people, which means the need could be greater than they know. 

Libertino says MAB is serving around 8-12% of the vision-impaired population in Mecklenburg County at any given time, which is a commendable number but one she hopes to bring up in the years to come. 

“[People say,] ‘Wow, these are huge numbers,’ but I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s horrible,’” she said. “I can only reach 10% of the people that need me and these folks really need our assistance. They’re living in isolation. Anybody that was isolated during COVID understands what that does to you if you can’t get out and do things. That social aspect of your life is a really critical one.” 

The impact of Metrolina Association for the Blind

A major point of emphasis that we heard from both clients and staff at Metrolina Association for the Blind (MAB) during our recent visits was that folks who struggle with vision impairment can do anything sighted folks can do, they just have to do it differently. 

MAB helps teach clients those different skills with services that range from cane training and technology workshops to providing resources like talking remote controls and watches with large numbers on them.  

There are also support groups that help clients connect with a community of folks going through similar struggles. 

Queen City Nerve spoke with Ronda Linton, who worked in an Atrium Health emergency department for 23 years before a brain bleed robbed her of much of her vision in 2021. We met her as she made her rounds greeting friends at the organization’s 91st birthday celebration in the facility’s parking lot on Louise Avenue. 

She described how she had been depressed and ashamed as she struggled with vision loss in the beginning. 

“If it hadn’t been for this center, I wouldn’t have met a lot of these people, I wouldn’t have went any further because I was so down about it,” she recalled. “I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t do things that I normally do.

“I had to get used to using a cane, which at the time, I was ashamed to let other people see me using it,” she continued. “I guess when you think you’re up here and then something happens to you and then you feel like you’re down at the bottom, when you get depressed, you can’t really find your way out of it.” 

O’Daniel worked as a social worker at MAB for many years before retiring in 2012 at age 68. Since there was no one to take her place in leading the support groups, she stayed on, continuing to host support groups to this day at 81 years old. 

Queen City Nerve heard from a number of people who credited O’Daniel with helping them out of their struggles with depression or other anxieties. 

For her part, O’Daniel, who has been legally blind since she was 13 years old, said hearing people leave her meetings in a better place than they arrived is all the payment she needs for her tireless work. 

“I love doing it. I love seeing people blossom,” she said. 

O’Daniel always ends her sessions by asking folks what part was most helpful to them. There’s one answer in all her years helping folks that sticks with her to this day. 

“In this particular time, one of the ladies said, ‘I learned I don’t have to spend the rest of my life in my bedroom.’ Oh, wow. That hit me hard, because she had not said that before.” 

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O’Daniel said she has been through times when money was tight for the organization, and it’s always a tough thing to see. 

“I was having people die on the waiting list because the waiting list was two years long. That’s what it is now,” she said. “That’s just a horrible thought, especially for the case managers and the social workers who are having to tell these people, ‘I don’t have anything I can offer you right now.’” 

While vision loss affects folks of all ages, it is prominent among older people, affecting around one in 10 people aged 75 or older. With Mecklenburg County expected to see its population of residents aged 65 or older double over the next two decades, the need will only get more urgent. 

Libertino expects tens of thousands more residents in Mecklenburg County alone will need MAB’s services in the years to come. She and her team are currently focused on how to raise the funds to meet those needs. 

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While the organization’s accessible documents services agency — which translates official documents such as bank statements, credit reports and the like into Braille, audio and large print — funds much of the vision rehab services, that business is not growing at anywhere near the rate that the population with needs for services is. 

Libertino and her team are currently working to create a more traditional nonprofit funding model that relies on donations to reach more clients. 

“We historically had not really gone to the public like most nonprofits would and only living off contributed revenues,” she said. “We’re a 90-year-old organization that doesn’t have this huge donor base because we were able to fund what we were doing. That was the culture. We’re trying to transition.” 

For folks like Ronda Linton and Max Kimpson, MAB has been a lifeline — one that they want to see continue helping others like them in the future. 

“This building, we need this place,” said Linton. “There’s a lot of people and a lot of children that we need to be able to help. They need all the funding they can get.”

Visit the Metrolina Association for the Blind website to learn more about the organization and how you can help.