An organization run by a former white supremacist that helps neo-Nazis, members of the KKK and other far-right radicals leave their hateful groups is under threat by federal budget cuts.

Ex-skinhead Christian Picciolini founded Life After Hate in 2009, and uses his understanding of fascist hate groups to encourage others to step into the light.

The group was awarded a $400,000 Justice Department grant in 2016 to continue its work with white extremists.

But Donald Trump is now considering reallocating those funds to groups solely focused on fighting Islamic extremism - putting Life After Hate's unique mission at risk.

Reformed: Christian Picciolini is a former skinhead and the founder of Life After Hate, which gets ex-white supremacists to help other radical right members to leave hate groups

Old times: Piccolini is seen here as a youth with Shannon Martinez, who also reformed and helps the group. But Life After Hate is threatened by Donald Trump's possible budget changes

Helped: Shane Johnson grew up in the KKK, but Life After Hate is helping him acclimate to the wider world. Trump wants to shift all anti-extremist money to counter Islamic extremism

Piccolini said he started the organization because it's hard for white extremists to disengage from the communities that support them.

'Even though I'd abandoned the ideology, I wasn't ready to give up my community and my power and my identity, and I knew how hard it would be for other people to leave this type of ideology or this type of movement,' he explained.

It's a system that other organizations without intimate experience of the white power movement would have trouble replicating.

It is also very much in need, says Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama.

He says it's hard to determine exact numbers, but around 100,000 people might be members in hate groups and several hundred thousand could be linked informally.

'I do think that this is a particularly important moment for this kind of exit work to be happening because we have seen in the last year, year and a half, a real legitimization of these views,' he said.

Last week the SPLC revealed that anti-Muslim groups had increased from 34 to 101 from 2015-2016, and white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups are also on the rise.

However, the Trump administration is now considering redirecting a federal program combating violent extremism of all kinds to solely focus on Islamic radicals - even though several other grant recipients already deal with that issue.

The 'Countering Violent Extremism,' or CVE, project may be changed to 'Countering Islamic Extremism' or 'Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,' sources close to the president have said.

Worried: Martinez, seen today, became a skinhead to deal with the anger of being sexually assaulted. Now she worries that there is a dangerous upsurge in far-right groups

That is a dramatic shift for the CVE. In 2016, Congress appropriated $10 million in grants for CVE efforts, awarding the first round of grants - including Life After Hate's share - on January 13, 2016.

The year before, Dylann Roof became the highest-profile white supremacist terrorist in some time when he shot nine black people inside a historic African-American church in Charleston.

Among others approved for the money were local governments, city police departments, universities and non-profit organizations.

Life After Hate isn't the only group trying to dissolve white power groups; the Philadelphia-based One People's Project was set up both to monitor racist groups and to confront them directly.

Its founder, Daryle Lamont Jenkins - who is black - meets white nationalists at public gatherings and talks one-on-one with to show them there's a way other than hate. Some have never met a black person, he said.

But Life After Hate is unique in that it uses insider knowledge of former white extremists to connect with those still in hate groups.

Ex-racist: Martinez, seen giving a Nazi salute as a teen, talks to white supremacists on Facebook and encourages them to leave the hate groups that form their entire community

Shannon Martinez, 42, is a long-time friend of Piccolini's who was also swayed away from extremism. She now works with Life After Hate, and talks on Facebook to doubting white supremacists.

She grew up in a relatively normal Atlanta family, but rebelled after being sexually assaulted at a party, getting into the punk scene then the skinhead movement.

A photograph shows her and Piccolini giving Nazi salutes in front of a Confederate flag.

She believes she was on a path to prison or an early death when she moved in with the family of her skinhead boyfriend, who was away for Army training. His mother showed unconditional love that pulled her out of the abyss, Martinez said.

Today, she looks at photos of herself from her skinhead days and fights back tears.

'I was filled with rage and anger and the skinheads were the angriest people that I knew and I was kind of like, "Those are my people,"' she said.

She added that 'the ideology was a means of taking something that was ethereal, something that was unnamable, an anger and a rage that I felt, and giving it a focal point.'

Marked: Martinez (seen with her kids) still has a Celtic cross - a white power symbol - tattooed on her leg. She thinks Trump's election 'lit a fire under the butts of the white nationalists'

Those insights allow her to get through to the white supremacists in a way that other groups cannot, Piccolini says.

The need for such an organization is even stronger after Donald Trump became president despite having high-profile backing of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.

'The Trump election has absolutely lit a fire under the butts of the white nationalists,' Martinez said. 'It is like, "Our time is coming."'

So, Piccolini says, Life After Hate needs to reach out in a way that only it can.

'We act as a group of people who understand each other,' Piccolini said. 'We understand the motivations of where we came from and why we joined. We understand what keeps people in.

'And we help each other detach and disengage from that ideology and provide a support system for them as they go through that transformation.'

Shane Johnson knows only too well how hard it can be to divorce yourself from a hate group - especially when they are members of your own family.

The northern Indiana man was born and raised in extremism, joining his dad and many relatives in the Ku Klux Klan when he was just 14.

'We were known as the Klan family,' said Johnson, whose body is an elaborate patchwork of swastikas, and fascist iconography. One tattoo, on his left forearm, reads 'ARYAN.'

Johnson later joined a skinhead group, too, but he finally decided to quit after getting arrested, stopping drinking and meeting the woman who is now his wife.

His family didn't like that, he said, and jumped him at a gas station one night after learning he wanted to quit.

Out: Johnson was beaten up by his family when he left the KKK but made it out. Life After Hate is now helping him read the Bible without seeing it as a treatise on racial separation

'When I dropped out they beat the holy hell out of me,' he said.

Since then, Johnson, now 25, has tried to cover some of his racist tattoos with new ones and wears long sleeves to hide remnants of the past he regrets.

Life After Hate is helping him numerous ways, he said, including showing him how to read the Bible without seeing it as a treatise on racial separation, as he had been taught.

Johnson isn't ready to begin counseling others about leaving extremism; he still sometimes longs for his racist buddies and their ways.

But he said his own story is proof that hate doesn't have to be permanent: 'You can get out.'