Every year, federal and state agencies allocate billions in grants for rural infrastructure, economic development, and community services. Most of this funding goes to communities with dedicated grant writers and consultants. We're building tools to change that.
There are more than 500 municipalities and 100 counties in North Carolina, and the majority have populations under 50,000. These communities face the same infrastructure challenges as larger cities — aging water systems, gaps in broadband coverage, downtown vacancy, housing shortages — but without the administrative staff to navigate the federal funding landscape.
The grant programs exist. The eligibility is there. What's missing is awareness. A town manager or county commissioner in rural North Carolina shouldn't need to monitor dozens of agency websites, parse Federal Register NOFOs, or hire a $150/hour consultant just to learn that USDA Rural Development has a rolling application for the exact fire truck their volunteer department needs.
We're building a research-driven discovery engine that matches communities to the funding programs they're already eligible for. Rather than starting from a program and finding towns, we start from a town — its population, county tier, geography, economic profile — and surface every relevant opportunity across USDA Rural Development, HUD, EDA, FEMA, ARC, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission, and North Carolina's own Commerce Department programs.
The tool pre-screens for hard eligibility requirements, flags nuanced prerequisites that need verification, ranks matches against the community's own stated priorities, and generates a starting draft for letters of interest — all in a single session.
Town managers, mayors, county managers, commissioners, clerks, and planning directors in small rural communities. Regional councils of government. Nonprofit organizations serving rural areas. Economic development professionals looking for a faster way to scan the landscape. Anyone who believes that a town of 3,000 people or a Tier 1 county shouldn't be at a structural disadvantage when it comes to accessing public funding.
North Carolina is our pilot state. We chose it because of the state's well-defined county tier system, the range of federal designations (Appalachian Regional Commission, Southeast Crescent Regional Commission), and the depth of NC Commerce's own grant infrastructure. Our goal is to validate the model here, then expand to additional states with similar rural funding challenges.
This is an active beta. The data is real, the programs are current, and we're improving the tool continuously based on feedback from the communities it's designed to serve.
Want to learn more or help us test the tool in your community?