Trust for Civic Life awards $400,000 to Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation

The Trust for Civic Life has awarded $7.6 million to 20 new Civic Hub grantees, local groups across rural America working to rebuild trust and connection outside of politics, including $400,000 to Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation (SMIF). It’s the Trust’s third round of grants as a philanthropic collaborative that brings together national funders of various backgrounds and ideologies to invest in locally led civic efforts as a strategy for addressing the country’s deep divides.

“Local ownership is the bedrock of civic life,” shared Benya Kraus, SMIF president and CEO. “Having an equity stake in the future of your downtown, your school system or your local river fosters both individual responsibility and a mutual reliance on your neighbor. We need the financial, knowledge and social capital to flow towards this truth.”

Trust funding will advance three priorities: expanding local ownership of community assets, strengthening regional collaboration and investing in the next generation of civic leaders. SMIF will help communities explore new financing tools, access resources and build the relationships that support long-term community participation.

Since the Trust launched in 2024, it has invested nearly $27 million into rural regions, which receive just 3 percent of national philanthropic funding. The new funding follows the Trust’s latest survey of more than 1,000 rural community members, which found that trust in national institutions is eroding but trust, agency and belonging all remain strong locally, and are closely tied to neighbors taking action together.

“Americans are telling us that national politics are leaving them frustrated and without agency, but they still feel connected to their own communities and believe they can effect change where they live and work,” said Charlie Brown, executive director of the Trust for Civic Life. “That’s a powerful insight, and we see it reflected in the work of each of our new Civic Hub grantees. Our goal is to get more funding into the hands of those who have already built trust locally and know what inspires their neighbors to participate in their communities.”

Each year, the Trust directs its funding to Civic Hubs, embedded local groups that respond to community needs and turn bystanders into participants, building the conditions to sustain civic life over the long term. These three-year grants are a rare source of flexible funding in rural regions, and this year’s grants ranged from $300,000 to $425,000 per organization.

All 20 of the new grantees report operating amid community division or polarization, and a third say it regularly disrupts daily life. They are responding by drawing people into community life through many entry points: disaster relief, cultural celebration, shared physical spaces, entrepreneurship, intergenerational connection and youth engagement.

The work looks different in every community. In Arkansas, a grantee brings businesses, nonprofits, government and residents together at a repurposed school to collaborate in ways they never have before. In the Southwest borderlands, youth restore the landscapes and watersheds around them. In western North Carolina, a tribal cultural museum provides free programming on Native art, history and language and creates space for community members to reclaim and practice their traditions.

Eighty-five percent of grantees plan to use the funding for civic opportunities that help community members build relationships and solve local problems together; others will direct it toward operations, third spaces and community lending. Nearly a quarter of grantees already have co-funding committed from regional funders, showing the catalytic effect of Trust grants and advancing the Trust’s goal of coordinating greater support for locally led civic work.

From the border communities of Arizona to small towns in Maine, the new grantees reach across 16 states, with 70 percent serving red states and 30 percent serving blue states. More than half of the Trust’s funding goes to four priority regions: Central Appalachia, the Black Belt, the Southwest Border and Tribal Lands, with the rest supporting rural communities in transition, including those navigating the loss of a major employer or other significant economic or demographic change.

Since launching in 2024, the Trust has supported more than 250 groups and programs, including 66 Civic Hubs. It expects to award an additional $2 million in small grants in partnership with its Civic Hub network by the end of 2026.

See the full list of new 2026 Civic Hub grantees.

About the Trust for Civic Life

The Trust for Civic Life is a grantmaking collaborative supporting the community efforts that help Americans connect, solve problems together and feel confident in a shared future. Launched in 2024, the collaborative brings together a cross-ideological team of funders to invest $50 million by 2028 in a new wave of local civic opportunities that increase trust, agency and belonging in rural America. Through its grantmaking, the Trust funds both the critical groundwork and promising experiments that allow civic participation to take hold in rural communities and spread across the country. The Trust was initiated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Stand Together and Omidyar Network, and has grown to include 23 funding members from national philanthropy and the private sector. Learn more at www.trustforciviclife.org.