About Heartland Fund
Our country is stronger when we invest in rural and Native communities, creating thriving places where rural working people can determine their own futures
Heartland Fund Fuels Rural Progress
The 501(c)(3) Heartland Fund is a unique funding collaborative building power toward shared prosperity, a thriving democracy, and a healthy climate across diverse communities in rural areas and small cities. We bring together resources from leading philanthropic organizations and individual donors. Then we pair them with close relationships, issue-specific expertise, and an agile, collaborative strategy. This prepares us to respond quickly to evolving rural challenges and support solutions rooted in local stories, leadership, and vision.
We support rural and Native communities to protect and expand democratic participation and create solutions to critical local and national issues so rural working people can determine our own futures. We invest in the tools and capacity rural leaders and organizations need to start meaningful conversations, to organize our friends and neighbors, and build diverse coalitions united by shared values and purpose. On top of grants and investments, we provide wraparound support — convenings and peer learning, tailored research and data, fundraising and leadership coaching, and communications infrastructure — so rural leaders communicate powerfully about the issues that impact our lives.
Relationships Drive Rural Success
Heartland Fund builds close, long-term relationships with rural and Native leaders so we can respond quickly, tailor support, and help local work grow stronger over time. We bring together organizing, communications, and leadership development so groups can recruit volunteers, tell people-first stories, and build durable coalitions rooted in shared values. We also lift up “bright spot” wins so strong rural ideas can spread to neighboring counties, across states, and throughout the country.
Rural is Ready
Across the country, people in rural communities are passionate about the places where we live and are deeply connected to the people, lands, and traditions that make each of our communities unique. But many of our communities have limited access to affordable housing, quality healthcare, education, essential services, and even the ballot. These challenges have snowballed due to lack of government and philanthropic investment. Rural communities are ready for change, and we are ready to provide working-class folks with the tools and support they need to enact that change for their families.
Seeing Rural
Rural America’s demographics and cultural histories are rapidly evolving; 24% of rural residents are people of color, and many are immigrants. Heartland amplifies new rural voices, ideas, and energy by promoting racial justice and seeking partnerships with groups working in rural communities of color, with young people, and groups leading bold race-forward social and economic justice work in majority-white communities. The changing cultural fabric of rural communities is reflected through the many partnerships and coalitions we help foster.
Grantee Spotlight
Missouri Ballot Victory Proves it Pays to be Bold
A Missouri coalition that included grantee Missouri Organizing and Voter Engagement (MOVE) prioritized rural counties in a successful campaign for workers’ rights. Advocates packaged two ambitious pro-worker policies into one ballot initiative, effectively raising the minimum wage and securing paid sick leave protections. The overwhelmingly popular ballot initiative passed with huge support, including the backing of 21 rural Missouri counties.
Tool
Rural Map and Dashboard
Our Rural Map and Dashboard helps answer the common question: “How do we define rural?” Informed by nuanced feedback from our grantee network, the Dashboard provides rural classifications for each of the country’s census tracts. You can sort by state, county, congressional, and legislative districts. The Dashboard also provides detailed insight into voting trends and demographics.
Racial Justice is Essential to our Mission
Heartland Fund practices racial justice in action throughout our work.
By the numbers
In 2025 our donors helped us grant millions to groups in areas where rural action will define policy and civic engagement outcomes. Through grants and strategic investments, Heartland provides our grantees with the tools they need to support inspiring leaders, lift local voices, mobilize new voters, and advocate for better government.
$16M
in grants
$800K
in additional aligned funding
200
organizations across 30 states
49%
of funding to groups working with BIPOC communities
The Latest
Heartland Fund in the News
Rural Democracy Co-Authors Op-Ed for America’s 250th
A 250th anniversary op-ed shows how rural organizers are reclaiming power and keeping “We the People” alive.
Changes to rural postal service will delay mail and disenfranchise voters
Heartland provided analysis to media outlets.
Editorial: Cuts to Medicaid could devastate rural hospital staffing
In the small border city of Nogales, Dr. Ed Paul sees well-trained, hardworking doctors and nurses.
Widespread coverage of Rural Policy Action Report
One hundred eighty radio stations covered the report’s release, focusing on priorities like education and health care.
Discover More About the Heartland Fund
Learn more about who we are and how to support our work.
Our History
The Heartland Fund launched in 2018 to strengthen democracy and advance shared prosperity in rural America. That first year, we published All the People, All the Places to better understand the challenges and possibilities for rural communities, and to rally our funding partners to support effective rural civic engagement.
This landscape analysis also informed our strategy – supporting local groups and leaders to drive year-round community engagement. We provided critical early funding to many emerging groups. In 2020 we were the first national funder to back Loud Light in Kansas, organizing rural and small town young people. Our early investment allowed them to get established, scale up, and ultimately take down a discriminatory law targeting voter registration efforts in 2024. We also learned important lessons about the support rural organizers need to achieve their goals.
By the end of 2020, we grew to support almost 100 grantees, generating impressive momentum across our network. For example, we helped groups access highly effective new digital platforms for peer-to-peer voter mobilization in rural Latine and Black communities. In response to grantee needs we also designed new tools and shared resources; we hosted the first Rural Policy Action Summit in 2021 and then created the Rural Map and Dashboard in 2022.
Building on this progress, in 2022 we started a program to seize emerging opportunities by engaging farmers, landowners, and other rural community members in the clean energy transition. In that first year of launching the Rural Climate Partnership (RCP), our efforts centered around regenerative agriculture, wind, and solar, as well as new technologies for electrification and efficiency. RCP granted to groups like Native Renewables Inc., an Indigenous-led nonprofit addressing urgent energy needs with solar solutions on the Hopi and Navajo Nations.
As we learned from our grantees and partners, we created two exciting new programs in 2023. We launched the Rural Youth Voter Fund (RYVF) to engage the millions of rural young people who have gone uncontacted by most statewide civic engagement efforts, and we built capacity to implement emerging public and private funding through the new Resource Rural program. Ambitious from the outset, each program has achieved notable successes. RYVF grantee Rural Arizona Engagement, for example, has trained 90 rural youth through their fellowship to lead the next generation in Arizona. And in North Carolina, Resource Rural grantee We Are Down Home won a $6 million increase in annual public school funding organizing around the urgent need for facility upgrades.
In 2023 and 2024, Heartland expanded our grantmaking and added significant capacity-building support to meet our grantees’ needs. Years of building connections and strengthening rural civic infrastructure paid off – with Native students getting school improvements in northern Minnesota, rural residents securing ballot access in northeastern Pennsylvania, and dairy grazing apprentices receiving mentorship across Wisconsin.
Today, rural communities face urgent new challenges. Our programs have demonstrated that rural and small-town Americans must be an essential part of the coalition ensuring all our communities can thrive. Through our dynamic approach of bridge building, organizing, storytelling, and investment in communities, we provide a bulwark against the pressing threats, and an opportunity to contest for the heart and soul of America.
Tax Deductible Non-Profit
The 501(c)(3) Heartland Fund is the first funding collaborative building power toward a thriving democracy, healthy climate, and shared prosperity across diverse communities in rural areas and small cities. Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed under the law.
The grantee work described on this website may describe activities that were not funded directly by Heartland Fund, but provide a comprehensive overview of the impact of our grantees’ work. No funds from the Heartland Fund have been used to conduct any political activity or intervene in any election.
Programs
The Heartland Fund makes significant investments across three programs:
- Rural Democracy – civic engagement and multi-issue advocacy
- Rural Climate Partnership – catalyzing climate solutions
- Resource Rural – implementation of federal funding opportunities
Together, these three programs support a single strategy to equip rural leaders with the resources, policy tools, and communications power they need to create lasting change.
Impact Report
Heartland Fund is delivering results: advancing clean energy, strengthening local economies, and expanding civic participation.
In our 2025 Impact Report, we share inspiring stories, highlight grantees creating thriving places, and offer four themes that guide our work in driving progress across rural America.
Funding Collaborative
Funding collaboratives bring together multiple funding partners to learn together and support a common mission with greater grantmaking flexibility and focused expertise. The Heartland Fund utilizes this model to combine resources and drive progress across rural America. By pooling funds through one coordinated structure, our funding partners can reach trusted rural grassroots groups. They also draw on Heartland Fund’s wraparound support: capacity building, research, communications, and convening. That amplifies the impact of every dollar. Funding collaboratives offer a new way of giving that augments the individual capacity of philanthropic organizations and donors.