For strategic partners & funders
Help shape what’s next for rural communities.
The challenges facing rural communities are complex. The opportunities to address them are significant.
AscendRural brings rural communities, innovators, and strategic partners together to explore promising technologies, test what works in real-world settings, and build pathways for broader impact.
Whether you’re advancing a specific priority, investing in rural innovation, or bringing expertise to the table, there’s a place for you in this work.
The opportunity
The right partnerships make more possible.
Good ideas alone don’t create lasting change. They need the right people, resources, and opportunities to prove their value.
Through AscendRural, partners can help identify important rural challenges, connect promising solutions with communities ready to explore them, and generate insights that move the field forward.
Shape priorities
Help focus innovation on challenges that matter to rural communities and align with your mission.
Advance solutions
Support promising technologies as they move from potential to real-world application.
Build evidence
Learn what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
Extend impact
Turn lessons from individual communities into insights and opportunities that benefit more rural places.
Three ways to partner
Ways to work together.
Lead an initiative around your own priorities, join one already taking shape, or bring your expertise and networks to the work.
Champion a Rural Impact Initiative
Your priorities. Our model. Shared impact.
A focused effort built around the outcomes your organization wants to advance. Every initiative is co-created around your mission, priorities, timeline, and level of funding, with your input throughout.
Download the one-pagerWhat your funding enables
A cohort of rural communities, ready to act
Rural organizations facing the challenge you care about, convened to define needs together.
Vetted, rural-ready solutions
Technologies sourced and screened against criteria rural partners help set.
Pilots with clear decisions
Real-world testing with measures agreed up front, so every pilot ends in a clear next step.
Evidence you can share
Independent findings and lessons you can share with your board, your network, and the field.
Advance a shared priority
Join work already taking shape.
We bring together a group of partners around a shared rural priority. Sponsors pool their resources and help shape the work along the way, alongside the rural organizations living with the challenge.
Sponsorship can support community engagement, solution sourcing, readiness building, and real-world testing.
Share your interestHow it works
We convene around a shared priority
AscendRural brings funders and partners together around a rural challenge that matters to all of them.
Sponsors shape it along the way
Partners contribute resources and perspective as priorities, solutions, and pilots take shape with rural organizations.
Everyone shares in what we learn
Findings, evaluation results, and lessons are shared with every sponsoring partner and the wider field.
Collaborate with us
Bring your expertise and networks.
National associations, research institutions, public agencies, and industry partners bring expertise, networks, and voice to rural innovation.
Who we collaborate with
Ways to collaborate
Thought leadership
Co-author insights and research, join our webinar series, and help shape the conversation on rural innovation.
Events and convenings
Speak, host, or sponsor at the AscendRural Summit, Solution Showcases, and regional convenings.
Research and evaluation
Partner on real-world, independent evaluations and help build evidence that informs rural technology adoption.
Network partnerships
Share community cohorts, innovation challenges, and findings with your members, and bring organizations together around shared priorities.
Expertise and mentorship
Serve as an accelerator mentor or challenge judge, and help companies understand rural realities.
Public programs
Work with us to identify rural priorities, source and evaluate technologies, and turn public investment into outcomes.
Rural innovation in action
See what partners make possible.
Let’s create lasting rural impact, together.
Whether you are ready to champion an initiative, join work already underway, or explore a new strategic collaboration, we would love to hear what you are working toward.
Open now: Partnership opportunities.
