Rural LISC Mission
With residents and partners, Rural LISC supports resilient and inclusive rural communities as great places to live, work, and innovate. Rural LISC strives to identify priorities and opportunities and deliver the most appropriate support to meet local needs. We achieve this through integrated strategies and programs focused on five pillars of rural community development: Creative Capital, Broadband & Infrastructure, Workforce Development, Housing, and Disaster Solutions.
What is Rural LISC?
In 1995, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a community development support organization working in metropolitan areas across the country, launched Rural LISC, a national program created to expand LISC's reach beyond urban areas to include rural communities. Today, Rural LISC partners with more than 140 rural community-based organizations, including five financial intermediaries, helping them identify challenges and opportunities and delivering the most appropriate support to meet local needs. Together we are working to transform communities in more than 2,400 counties across 49 states and Puerto Rico.
Recognizing that rural communities' needs are not focused on agriculture alone, Rural LISC provides a wide range of services, including training, technical assistance, information and financial support, to help rural community developers address the problems rural communities face. We use our Comprehensive Community Development Strategy to support our partners in expanding investment in housing and real estate, increasing family income and wealth, stimulating economic development, improving access to quality education, and growing healthy environments and lifestyles.
Rural LISC strives to accomplish this mission with a foundation of support built on technical assistance and capacity building while focusing on five pillars of rural community development: Creative Capital, Broadband & Infrastructure, Workforce Development, Housing, and Disaster Solutions.
Our News & Stories
Keeweenaw Food Co-op
In a Michigan town of just 5,000 people, the Keeweenaw Co-op has over 2,000 member-owners! We're proud to highlight their mission to provide high quality organic and natural groceries and finance their expansion to a new location in downtown Hancock, MI.
Moving the Needle in the Mississippi Delta
Rural LISC and the Walton Family Foundation are working together to move the needle on economic opportunity in the Mississippi Delta. These are the stories of how our partners are working with Delta residents to train for new careers, launch new businesses and pursue their family's dreams of homeownership.
Rural LISC Selected in IEDC's Highly Competitive ERC Inaugural Cohort
Washington, D.C. – The International Economic Development Council (IEDC) and its partners are excited to announce the first cohort of Economic Recovery Corps (ERC) fellows and host communities. Launched in 2023 through a $30 million cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), ERC is designed to build capacity in some of the hardest-hit and most economically distressed areas across the United States while cultivating the next generation of economic development leaders. This month, 65 Fellows will commence their two-and-a-half-year field placements with host organizations across the nation. Fellows will spearhead catalytic projects that advance new ways of doing economic development to build more resilient, inclusive, and equitable economies. The ERC program officially launched with a four-day training and networking event in Portland, Oregon on February 12-15, 2024.
The Rural Opportunity and Development Series of Virtual Sessions
The ROAD Series of Virtual Sessions is a series of virtual exchanges co-designed and hosted by the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group, the Housing Assistance Council, Rural Community Assistance Partnership and Rural LISC. The ROAD Seires of Virtual Sessions will highlight and unpack rural development ideas and strategies that are critical in response to COVID-19 and to long-term rebuilding and recovery. Each month, the ROAD Sessions will feature stories of a diverse set of on-the-ground practitioners who have experience, wisdom and savvy to share. The series will reflect and emphasize the full diversity of rural America, spotlight rural America’s assets and challenges, and lift voices and lived experience from a wide range of rural communities and economies. Each Session will include an added opportunity for peer exchange. Overall, ROADS aims to infuse practitioner stories and lessons into rural narratives, policymaking and practice across the country, and to strengthen the network of organizations serving rural communities and regions.