Rural Development
Rural Development
The Mountain West is now experiencing economic and demographic pressure that is changing how the landscape supports our economies and communities.
Rural Development helps people guide how that change occurs in their own communities.
About
The Rural Development Program offers rural Montana and Tribal communities the coordination, knowledge, and time to articulate, fund, and implement community-driven projects – capacity that rural communities often lack and can’t sustain on their own.
What we do
When invited by the community, we support community-driven projects that have the highest potential to positively impact that community.
Heart of the Rockies supports the community in whatever the direction the communities take their projects and visions.
Too often, both conservation and rural development projects follow a top-down process, with outside “experts” identifying needs on behalf of communities, rather than allowing the people who live in communities to determine their own needs.
Our program build relationships with community partners, listening to their needs and visions, and supporting project development. We then help them find and secure funding for these projects.
Technical Assistance
Funding is widely available through federal, state, and private sources to support projects, but often involves a process that can be intimidating to find, apply for, and administer.
Funding is widely available through federal, state, and private sources to support projects, but often involves a process that can be intimidating to find, apply for, and administer.
The communities that most want and need this funding typically don’t have staff with the time, knowledge, or experience to successfully navigate this process.
Our involvement allows existing funding to actually be accessible to the communities that want and need it.
Why
Our Rural Development program bridges the too often and mistakenly polarized interests of rural development and conservation.
We recognize that thriving western rural communities are inextricably linked to thriving conservation.
Our program supports vibrant and thriving rural communities by improving quality of life, economic opportunities, and outdoor experiences for established residents.
We work to ensure rural communities seeking opportunities to retain their livelihoods do not have to turn to extractive industries or harmful development that fragments the landscape.
The community-driven projects we support increase revenue from responsible agriculture, tourism, and recreational opportunities.
Rural communities provide the food, water, and other natural resources on which we all depend; simultaneously, rural community industries are equipped to accommodate and steward the habitat needed for wildlife to thrive.
When we help keep people in their rural communities by retaining livelihoods, we help sustain and develop their sense of place. Simply put, people protect the places they love.
Rural Development Successes
Number of communities in Western Montana the Rural Development program has served
Funding the Rural Development program has secured for on-the-ground community projects.
Projects
In partnership with Montana Access Project, the Rural Development program offers a Get Grant Ready Workshop.
This workshop helps increase community awareness and knowledge of grants available to rural communities, provide additional capacity for small communities that need extra support, and allow Heart of the Rockies to work with new communities.
Get Grant Ready Guidelines include KEY ELEMENTS that most funders are looking for. They are designed with many grant programs in mind to help you build out and develop a project idea.