Partnerships and Opportunity Areas

We share the sense of urgency for problem-solving that we’re hearing in our statewide outreach.  By working together, we can build effective, efficient solutions across rural communities.

Let’s work together to build resilience across rural communities.

By working together with key partners, the Institute can help to build effective, efficient solutions for challenges that our rural economy is facing.

Key opportunity areas:

• Agriculture: Scale regenerative agriculture as an alternative to industrial food production.

• Connected Community Schools: Provide rural schools with human capital, technological expertise and resources that will allow them to deliver high-quality education in remote locations.

• Transit and Housing: Address the rural public transportation/affordable housing nexus that discourages rural alternatives to urban housing crises.

• Workplace Practices: Take advantage of new workplace practices that allow for remote and co-working spaces, wrapping around needed services and amenities.

• Communication Technologies: Harness new communication technologies to de-urbanize high-tech employment opportunities.

• Healthcare: Design the next generation of telehealth/remote health delivery.

• Green Rural Energy: Foster rural infrastructure and technology innovations to promote rural green energy production, allowing new forms of energy to support rural economies.

• Resilient Ecosystems: Mitigate and restore rural environments to promote regional resiliency in lake and forest ecosystems.

• Policy and Governance: Support the development of innovative policy tools and governance strategies that optimize broad participation and ownership of rural community solution.