Past and Current Grants

Current Demonstration Grants

NRFC's current round of demonstration grants are intended to support community-based initiatives that are working to alleviate poverty within their region of focus through addressing the four key elements of NRFC's theory of change:

• employing asset- and culture-based economic strategies for restructuring and strengthening their communities;
• addressing historic barriers of race, class and power through more
  inclusively structuring relationships of leadership and power;
• promoting alternative giving strategies that empower histoically
  disadvantaged populations within rural communities; and
• utilizing grassroots advocacy to bring about policy change from the ground
  up in order to address systemic issues contributing to poverty and racial
  disparities.

These regional demonstrations collectively comprise NRFC's multi-regional demonstration to show how strategic, multi-year investment in these four aspects of rural poverty alleviation and transformational change can begin to create new momentum and impact in transforming rural communities and regions.

Current Grants

Past Grants

NRFC funder partners were initially motivated by the glaring imbalance between urban and rural philanthropic contributions and by the intent of NRFC funders.

In the first five years of its work (July 2001 - June 2006), NRFC awarded $3,071,760 in single and multiple-year grants, ranging from $50,000 to $750,000, to 17 diverse initiatives in 15 states.

Past Grants