Heartland Fund Network - Heartland Fund

Over 200 groups working to improve rural communities

Invest in a Powerful Rural Network

The Heartland Fund invests in over 200 organizations in 30 states to improve rural communities. Together, we work alongside hundreds of thousands in rural areas, small towns, and small cities to improve the lives of hardworking people.

Featured Program

Rural Climate Partnership

The Rural Climate Partnership advances climate solutions to build hometown prosperity through a rural-led, place-based, and benefits-forward approach. As a grantmaker, we offer more than just funding. We equip rural communities with technical assistance, narrative infrastructure, and capacity-building resources, focusing on empowering rural leaders and organizations.

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Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center

Heartland Fund gives our grantees the tools and resources they need to transform their communities.

Our Grantees

Up North Advocacy Education Fund

Winning Critical Funding for Rural Schools

After federal cuts stalled needed school repairs, rural Michigan organizers built a local strategy that won 20.5M in long-overdue repairs.

Wingbeat 88

Cultural Ties Vital to Native Civic Engagement

2024 marked 100 years since Native Americans were legally granted U.S. citizenship, and today they are organizing to overcome the deliberate barriers that discourage their full participation in U.S. democracy.

Decade of Organizing Bears Fruit in Minnesota

In 2023 Minnesota passed an ambitious agenda for widespread prosperity. State legislation included paid family and medical leave, affordable healthcare, and improved access to child care and early education. Minnesota also adopted an important clean energy plan, protected reproductive rights, improved access to voting, and ensured the opportunity for driver’s licenses for all. This profound policy shift was the product of years of organizing by Isaiah and their coalition partners.

Success

Our grantees have had tremendous success increasing the number of people participating in elections and civic decision-making. We’ve seen the formula for success: year-round organizing over multiple years with focus and scale.

Heartland Fund provides grantees the tools to meet the needs specific to rural areas, and financial support to increase the scale of their work. We support groups to increase civic engagement, register people to vote, and increase voter turnout while educating people about opportunities to engage on the issues they care about. Groups in the Heartland Fund network develop new leaders, lift up compelling local voices, and engage local governments to unify around shared civic goals.

Our network embodies the rural ethos: we help each other. For example, In This Together NEPA rallied members to ensure rural voters have access to ballot drop boxes. In rural North Carolina, Somos Siembra’s trained tens of thousands of people on their rights and mobilized over 250 small businesses to stand up as Fourth Amendment Workplaces that protect immigrant workers and their families. We know that rural people can improve our outcomes when we have the right tools and support.

Heartland Fund is more than just a funder — they are a true collaborator. Our team has benefited from participating in their rural communicators training cohort, and their Rural Policy Report, and are looking forward to working together on federal funding implementation, to name just a few examples. Sometimes rural groups can feel isolated from others in the movement — it really helps to be part of the Heartland Fund network.

Jenelle Ludwig-KrauseGrassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin

Rural Voices

We create momentum that improves the lives of rural people. Years of Heartland Fund investment have created a growing network of trained organizers, trusted messengers, and local leaders with the tools and resources to lead transformational conversations with rural people. By bringing people together and healing the divides in our communities, we create avenues for powerful solutions. In 2024, grantees across the Heartland network held 10 million conversations with their local community members, and they continue building on that momentum in communities across the country.

We are support diverse groups across the country with a deep investment in Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Grantees

West Virginia Can’t Wait

Supporting Progress

Our capacity-building programs help groups to become more effective and sustainable. We provide our grantees access to enhanced voter data and outreach tools, opportunities for learning and collaboration, and ongoing lessons and updates from the field. We also offer an intensive communications training and coaching pilot, new fundraising support, and urgent safety and security resources for organizations and individuals.

Rural Groups Build Power By Solving Problems

As some rural voters become discouraged about politics, more groups in our network are building power by first addressing practical problems in their community. For example, Neighboring Movement in Kansas starts by leveraging community participation in projects like a new child care center, and Latino cultural festival, then transitioning to relational voter outreach. Food AND Medicine in Maine organizes rural working people, starting with food donation and distribution. And West Virginia Can’t Wait’s Hometown Heroes program builds local leaders who provide critical senior services, support for people with felony records, and clothing pantries in local schools. Starting with tangible successes, these community leaders are more effective in tackling policy change and electoral participation.

New child care center opens in Kansas, with support from the Neighboring Movement

Heartland Fund provides tools and original research to support our Network

Network Tool

What Works in Rural America

Guidelines for effective messaging, engagement, and communications.

Network Tool

All the People, All the Places

A valuable landscape analysis for funders and other partners focused on the challenges and opportunities facing our small cities and rural areas.

Policy Tool

Rural Policy Action Report

Featuring priority legislation and executive action that supports working families and strengthens rural communities. The report also highlights numerous policy successes and the ongoing challenges people in rural communities face.

Connections

The Heartland Fund network creates a foundation for effective communications and policy.

Communications

Heartland Fund drives effective communications by establishing local trusted messengers, reaching people through local press, and showing the connection between national talking points and local impacts.

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Policies

We work to advance policies that improve the lives of rural people and ensure democracy works for us all. The Heartland Fund network has fueled a historic surge of rural progress, profoundly affecting numerous recent policy successes.