Rural eNews

October 2020

Funding & Finance Opportunities

Covid-19

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES is offering funding for community interventions to address the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic among health disparity and vulnerable populations.  Deadline:  12/1/2020.  Click here to review the grant guidelines.

Broadband

USDA is offering Community Connect Broadband Grant Program funding for communities without broadband access to provide residential and business broadband service and connect facilities such as police and fire stations, healthcare, libraries, and schools.  Deadline to apply:  12/23/2020.  Click here to review guidelines and to apply.

Community

THE SMART & FINAL CHARITABLE FOUNDATION supports nonprofit organizations that work to improve the quality of life in the communities the company serves in Arizona, California, and Nevada. The Foundation's areas of interest include health and wellness, education, hunger relief, disaster relief, and team sports and youth development. Deadline:  requests may be submitted throughout the year. Visit the company's website here to review the Foundation's guidelines and submit an online request.

THE SANTANDER BANK CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS PROGRAM supports nonprofit organizations in the communities the Bank serves in the northeast United States, including Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. The Bank's primary philanthropic areas of focus include Community Development Financial Institutions, Economic and Workforce Development, Affordable Housing, and Financial Education and Inclusion. Emphasis is given to programs that make a measurable difference in the lives of low- and moderate-income individuals and communities. Grants generally average $30,000. Deadline:  applications may be submitted through 10/15/2020. The online application link is available on the Bank's website here.

Housing

THE HOUSING ASSISTANCE COUNCIL, a CDFI providing vital capital to rural housing developers, is currently offering 0% interest financing for self-help and ‘sweat equity’ style housing development for acquisition and/or infrastructure improvements. Homebuyers must contribute at least 50 hours of sweat equity.  For more information, please click here.

THE TD CHARITABLE FOUNDATION is dedicated to sustaining the well-being of the communities served by TD Bank in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, DC. The Foundation's 2020 Housing for Everyone grant competition focuses on "direct relief and supportive services for renters affected by COVID-19." Support will be provided for programs that provide access to safe, clean, physically accessible affordable rental housing units and needed wraparound services for families, individuals, the elderly, new Americans, veterans, the disabled, women, and youth. Deadline:  10/30/2020. Click here to review application guidelines.

Other

THE APPALACHIAN REGIONAL COMMISSION is offering an Appalachia Nonprofit Resource Center Technical Assistance Program, for nonprofit organizations in the Appalachian region designed to lessen the immediate impact and future consequences of the COVID-19 crisis.  Geographic coverage: Available in specific counties in 13 Appalachian states.  Application Deadline: 10/9/2020.  Click here to review program guidelines.

ALASKA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION is inviting applications for Alaskan Workforce projects.  Grants of up to $50,000 will be awarded to organizations in support of projects that sharpen vocational skills and contribute to the competitiveness of Alaska's natural resource and overall economy.  Deadline:  10/15, 2020.  Click here to review application guidelines.

THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR is offering funding through The H-1B Rural Healthcare Grant Program that seeks to alleviate healthcare workforce shortages by creating sustainable employment and training programs in healthcare occupations (including behavioral and mental healthcare) serving rural populations. Applicants are encouraged to design their programs to assist unemployed individuals seeking entry or reentry into the workforce and underemployed workers in need of new skills and full-time employment opportunities. Deadline: 11/13/2020.  Click here to review program guidelines.

Training Events and Conferences

WEBINARS and other Online Events

Grant Station is offering a webinar, “Leading a Nonprofit Organization During the Pandemic,” October 1, 2020, 2:00-3:30 PM EDT.  If you are in a senior leadership role in a nonprofit organization during this pandemic, chances are you are experiencing tremendous anxiety. You may be asking yourself questions such as “How will we meet payroll?" and “Our staff and volunteers are wondering what will happen next and we are unsure how to answer them?” and so on.  Click here to register.  Cost:  $69.00 for one person, $149.00 for one group.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is offering a webinar, “A New Kind of Back to Work,” Friday, October 2, 2020, 9:00 AM–12 noon, EDT.  This event is for employers, workforce organizations, and educators who want to learn about creating the jobs of the future and how skills-based hiring is benefiting both workers and employers.  During the sessions, participants will learn how successful local companies are thinking about job creation and using diverse hiring and inclusive internal policies to hire and retain the workers they need.  Click here to register.

Organizing and Leadership Forum with the National Union of the Homeless, Saturday, October 3, 2:00 PM EDT.  Join the Action Network to hear from leaders of the NUH about their experiences in the late 70s and 80s, organizing and leadership lessons learned, and how they're bringing those experiences forward to today, as part of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.  Click here for more information and to register.

Registration is live for an all-virtual Convening on Healthy Food Access, to be hosted October 6-7, 2020 by The Food Trust, Reinvestment Fund and PolicyLink.  Registration costs $25, and all attendees must sign up by Thursday, October 1. Click here for registration.

Housing Assistance Council is offering a webinar, “Benefits of Infill Development, A Primer For Nonprofit Housing Developers” October 7, 2020, 3:00 PM EDT.  This webinar is intended to provide essential information on the benefits of utilizing infill lots for housing development.  To register, click here.

Grantmakers in Aging is offering a webinar, “Sustaining Innovations: Communities Respond to COVID-19,” October 7, 2020, 2:00–3:00 PM EDT.  Our communities continue to grapple with COVID-related challenges—broader, systemic, seemingly unending issues with long-term implications that change how we think about everything. We have an opportunity to consider the future with insights from lived-experiences.  Register here.

The 2020 virtual Regards to Rural, October 8-9, 2020, includes two days of breakout sessions, keynotes, and online networking opportunities. Join us online at this year’s conference to discuss rural priorities, explore innovative economic models, obtain tools to make change in your communities, and inspire action to help pave the way to rural vitality.  Register here.

Sage will host its Second Annual LGBT Elder Housing Symposium, October 13 - 16, 2020.  We are thrilled to continue the learnings from our first-ever National LGBT Elder Housing Symposium with our 2020 virtual institute. The National LGBT Elder Housing Initiative Virtual Institute will offer a series of workshops, engaging dialogue, and learning sessions. This event will build the capacity of the mainstream housing sector and community advocates to understand and attend to the housing challenges facing LGBT elders.  Click here to register.  Cost: $25.00.

NACo is offering a webinar “Navigating the Needs of Unhoused Populations Amidst COVID-19,” October 14, 2020, 3:00-4:00 PM EDT.  Addressing the public health needs of unhoused populations (to include access to testing and ability/safe place to quarantine, among others) is an integral component of containing the spread of an infectious disease.  Click here to register.

Register for the virtual Rural Community Action Assembly hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.  Even prior to the pandemic, many rural regions experienced inequitable access to capital. At this webinar, you’ll hear an in-depth discussion of how cross-sector collaborations in rural areas can leverage local assets to make investments into small businesses, broadband infrastructure, and other economic development projects. Date:  Thursday, October 15, 9:30 a.m.–12:00 noon EDT.  Click here to register.

NDC is offering the final course in the EDFP Certification Program™.  ED300 integrates the business credit and real estate finance skills learned in previous courses with the creative demands of deal structuring. Participants apply a process for solving problems in order to overcome the myriad obstacles—economic, financial, political, and social—to the successful structuring of business finance and real estate projects. The emphasis of this course is casework. Participants are challenged by case studies that involve complex financial issues such as workouts, business buyouts, and tax credits in real estate projects.  Click here for more information and to register.  Cost: $1425.00

NACo is offering a Virtual Federal Policy Summit October 20-21, 2020, featuring speakers with practical advice on pressing policy issues and updates on the federal policy landscape – broadband, healthcare, infrastructure, COVID-19 relief, public lands, disaster assistance and more.  Learn more and register here.

California Coalition for Rural Housing is offering a virtual conference “Building Beyond 2020: Making Good Trouble in Rural California,” October 26 through October 30, 2020.  Register here for this Zoom conference that offers a $75.00 registration.

October 26-30-2020, the Rural Assembly will offer a virtual gathering for Rural Assembly Everywhere. Participants will enjoy a diverse line-up of activities, speakers, and workshops crafted for rural advocates and allies. Conceived in the spirit of a festival, we welcome participation at all levels and encourage old and new allies to claim a spot at the table to help us chart the future of rural America. Join us online for a diverse line-up of activities, speakers, and workshops crafted for rural advocates and allies. To register, click here.

Volunteer Florida is hosting a training event October 27-29, 2020.  Volunteer Leadership Virtual Convening will provide volunteer engagement leaders with informative sessions covering topics like volunteerism and mental health, diversity, and risk management.  More than fourteen sessions are available to support you and your work.  Learn tools to navigate our changing community landscape from some of the volunteerism field’s best presenters.  Click here for more information.

CDFA invites you to attend the 2020 CDFA Virtual National Summit: Financing Our COVID-19 Recovery. Sign up for this forward thinking event and network with other leaders in the development finance industry to discuss best practices, trends, and project financing solutions.  The CDFA Virtual National Summit will be held November 9-13, 2020 and is designed to explore the financing programs and resources available to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19.  Get more information and register here.

CDFA / BNY Mellon Development Finance Webcast Series: Financing Resilient Infrastructure, Tuesday, November 17, 2020, 1:00 PM EDT.  During this installment of the CDFA // BNY Mellon Development Finance Webcast Series, we will analyze how to finance the built environment to mitigate disaster and protect human life.  Click here to register.

An Intro Food Systems Finance WebCourse will be held December 9-10, 2020, 12:00 - 5:00 PM EDT. The course will give students an opportunity to examine the development finance programs that sustain a local food system and how investments in that system can drive economic development on a broader scale.  For more information, click here.

 Webinar and Conference Recordings

Pre-recorded Webinar: “Expanding CDFI Coverage in Underserved Areas.”  The U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institute Fund (CDFI) offers a practical guide to market analysis including reasons and timing for doing one and the steps to take in conducting a successful analysis include defining research goals, scoping the target market, understanding the research design and methodology, setting concrete timelines and budget, and implementation goals.  Watch the webinar here.

Save the Date...

National Housing Conference's Solutions for Affordable Housing online convening will take place Tuesday, December 1, 2020, 11:00 AM - 5:00 PM EDT via Zoom.

Information and Other Resources

Articles, Reports, and Tools

An Accurate Census Count is Imperative for America. Here’s Why.  Matt Josephs, LISC SVP and head of the organization’s policy team, makes the urgent case for why a fair and accurate census count is so important for the health and wellbeing of our communities. Anything short of that undermines equity and thwarts our democratic process. Every one of us, he writes, has a role to play in making sure the census is successful.  Read more here.  Respond to the 2020 census online.   How to respond by phone or mail.  THE CENSUS DEADLINE HAS BEEN MOVED TO 10/05/2020!

A NACo brief highlights key considerations for counties in COVID-19 vaccination distribution.  The brief highlights key considerations for counties as they work with states and other local jurisdictions to prepare their vaccine distribution plans.  The plan was developed in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Defense (DoD). The agencies released the plan in the form of a brief report to Congress outlining a strategic overview of the plan, and an interim playbook for state, tribal, territorial and local public health programs to begin operationalizing a vaccination response to COVID-19 within their respective jurisdictions.  Click here to download the brief.

African Americans, Latinx, and Native Americans are disproportionately more likely to be experiencing financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a report from National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds.  Read more here.

“The Path to Rural Resilience” is a brief from the Center for American Progress that reports that given the changing nature of the rural economy, the lack of upward mobility in many rural communities, and the persistent gap in unemployment and poverty rates between metro and nonmetro counties, the United States needs to overhaul its current approach to rural development and create a new framework that builds resilient rural communities.  Get the report here.

Interactive maps from NACo provide county-level COVID-19 interactive data and tools are helping counties make decisions when it comes to battling the COVID-19 pandemic.  Click here for the maps.

New data from Carsey School of Public Policy shows that one-in-six children were poor before COVID-19 Pandemic.  Child poverty was 16.8 percent in 2019, leaving more than one in six children poor even before the effects of the pandemic-related recession are measured.  Read the brief here.

“Is Rural America Failing or Succeeding? Maybe Both” is the title of a brief from the Carsey School of Public Policy.  In this brief, authors Kenneth Johnson and Daniel Lichter summarize their peer reviewed article in Demography that provides cautionary lessons regarding the commonplace narrative of widespread rural decline and urban growth.  Get the brief here. 

The National Association of Counties has developed a county online federal advocacy toolkit to help you be an effective advocate for top county priorities.  To help local leaders advocate for top county priorities between now and the end of the year, NACo has developed an online Advocacy Toolkit, which features in-depth information, talking points, sample advocacy emails, tweets, etc.  Click here to view the Toolkit.

The Rural Blog posted an article “100 Days in Appalachia launches initiative to help outsider journalists better cover the region.”  A diverse network of advisers who live and work in Appalachia and are committed to making sure Appalachian stories are told accurately and respectfully. The advisers come from many different backgrounds and, collectively, have expertise in a wide range of fields.  Read more here.

An article in the New York Times, “African-American Native American residents of Oklahoma's Indian Country known as "Creek Freedmen" are fighting for recognition of their heritage.” In treaties signed after the Civil War, the Creek Freedmen won freedom and were promised tribal citizenship and an equal stake in the tribes’ lands and fortunes. But what followed were broken promises, exclusions and painful fights over whether tens of thousands of their descendants should now be recognized as tribal members.  Read the article here.

Technology Based Learning in Workforce Development & Education: A Review of the Research Literature.  U.S. Department of Labor published a workforce report that explores technology-based learning in the public workforce system with highlights on employability, basic literacy, technological literacy, job search skills and occupational training and certification availability.  Get the report here.

“Three Local Policies to Promote Equitable Mixed-Income Communities,” from Shelterforce asks, “Building inclusive mixed-income communities is one strategy to combat persistent poverty, promote social connectivity, and increase economic mobility for all. So how do we do it?”  Read the article here.

The Council of Development Finance Agencies (CDFA) has announced a collaboration with The Ohio State University's Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation (InFACT) that will provide economic development finance planning services to facilitate new food systems throughout the State of Ohio. This approach will focus on using development finance tools – such as tax-exempt bonds, tax credits, and revolving loan funds – to meet infrastructure, agriculture, and small business needs in support of regional food system innovation.  To read the press release, click here.

An article in Shelterforce, “Designing for Climate Change,” asks “How can affordable housing be more resilient to extreme weather and better prepared to deal with the consequences of climate change?”  Read the article here.

“The Impact of Coronavirus on Households Across America” from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, National Public Radio, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. households. The report covers health, economic, and work-related impacts and related issues such as broadband access. Includes a section on problems specific to rural households.  Click here to get the report.

Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics has released a brief, “America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2020.”  The report examines the relationship between child well-being and community type, including metropolitan, micropolitan, or rural, and provides rural/urban breakdowns on child race/ethnicity, maltreatment, poverty, mortality, health conditions, and more.  Get the brief here.

Households living in historically redlined neighborhoods are seeing a relatively higher prevalence of COVID-19 in their communities, a study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition finds. The study links the systemic effects of limited access to investment and other financial resources to poverty, reduced life expectancy and chronic diseases, all of which are “risk factors for poor outcomes from COVID-19.”  Click here to get the study.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released “‘Forced Automation’ by COVID-19? Early Trends from Current Population Survey Data.” This new research, led by Lei Ding and Julieth Saenz Molina, provides the first empirical analysis of the impact of COVID-19-induced automation on job losses. Click here to get the report.

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COVID-19 Resources

The COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI) developed by Surgo Foundation and featured as a CDC resource - identifies which communities may need the most support as coronavirus takes hold. Mapped to US census tract, county, and state levels, the CCVI helps inform COVID-19 planning and mitigation at a granular level. Access the Index here.

Homebase offers Memos, Guides, and Curated Resources here.

Carsey School of Public Policy has updated their reporting on COVID-19 Economic Crisis: By State.  Get the data here.

Rural LISC works with 92 partner organizations creating sustainable rural communities across 45 states. Visit our website here and sign up for the Rural LISC RSS feed here. If this email was forwarded to you and you would like to sign up to receive the Rural eNews each month, click here.

Send information on funding opportunities, events, publications, resources, or rural-related issues to sfelzke@lisc.org. Announcements will be published at our discretion based on space and applicability.  Please do not copy this document without permission.