Funding Opportunity: Rural Entrepreneurship

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation will award up to $8 million in grants to foster entrepreneurship across rural America. Four grants of up to $2 million each will be awarded to four rural regional entrepreneurship development systems.

Purpose:  The Kellogg Foundation is seeking applicants that will form a collaborative of groups (may be private, governmental, and nonprofit) to provide a full range of entrepreneurship development services for their region—be it a community, county, group of counties, reservation or state. Each collaborative must include a lead organization, such as a university, community college, community development financial institution and/or other established private, nonprofit or public entity to manage the grant.

Each will promote entrepreneurial activity in their region, produce entrepreneurial models for other communities, leverage significant investment, and stimulate national and state interest in rural entrepreneurship policies and strategies. The Kellogg Foundation has contracted with the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) to assist it in identifying states and regions in rural America that demonstrate the capability of creating effective Entrepreneurial Development Systems.

Application Process:  The application deadline is August 13, 2004. Final awards will be announced in March 2005.

More detailed application information can be found on the Kellogg Foundation's Web site at http://www.wkkf.org/ruralentrepreneurs or CFED's Web site at www.eshipsystems.org.  For additional questions, please contact CFED at 202.408.9788 ext 261 or email CFED at eshipsystems@cfed.org.