We’re thrilled to announce our 2026 Breakthrough Fund grantees! These grantees are bringing people together across class divides to meet community needs — in ways that also prioritize the deep, patient work of building trusting relationships. They work in very different regions, but have proven track records of delivering tangible change in local communities where economic anxiety is rising and social trust has frayed.

Strengthening Our Social Fabric  •  Central Oregon

Central Oregon Civic Action Project convenes diverse civic assemblies to collaborate on challenges facing an 8,000-square-mile region spanning tribal, rural, and urban communities transformed by rapid growth in outdoor tourism, tech, and healthcare. Its 2024 assembly on youth homelessness produced recommendations that the city council, county commission, and school district prioritized in new policies, and a second assembly on AI launches this December. COCAP also trains civic leaders in education and public institutions, and is building an online deliberative democracy platform to reach rural and remote residents.

Partners: Citizens for Community, Newberry Regional Partnership, Bloom, Healthy Democracy, Oregon’s Kitchen Table, Democracy Next, Central Oregon Community College, Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, Better Together Central Oregon, Mosaic Community Health, and more


Building a Bigger We in Montana  •  Montana (statewide)

Northern Plains Resource Council has built cross-class, cross-partisan coalitions in rural and urban Montana, which has been reshaped by industrial agriculture, a booming tourism industry, and a wave of remote workers and other newcomers. The group trains trusted community leaders to listen across class lines and to build local teams equipped with the agency and skills to shape decisions that matter most to entire communities, such as the construction of AI data centers, conservation of local grazing lands, and regulations around housing.

Partners: Carbon County Resource Council, Eastern Montana Resource Council, Yellowstone Valley Citizens Council


Healthy Mountain Communities  •  Western Colorado

Community Builders works with local partners to shape strong, livable communities in Colorado — a challenge that’s particularly acute in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys, where severe affordability challenges are pushing workers farther from jobs, deepening economic disparities, and reshaping communities and who belongs in them across the region. Using its transformative engagement model, Community Builders will help valley residents come together to build the trust, shared vision, and capacity needed to tackle the housing, transportation, and economic development challenges affecting their lives.

Partners: Colorado River Valley Economic Development Partnership, Colorado Mountain College, Valley Settlement, Mountain Voices Project


Unify Greater Buckeye Network  •  Cleveland, Ohio

NP3: Nurturing People. Power. Place. (Case Western Reserve University) is partnering with Neighborhood Connections and more than 40 local associations to unite Cleveland’s historically segregated Greater Buckeye community. This project embeds trust-building directly into a major urban redevelopment effort that includes creating mixed-income housing and revitalized business corridors. By forging relationships across class lines and ensuring residents have a voice in the process, the network is demonstrating that economic investment alone cannot succeed without social infrastructure.

Partners: Neighborhood Connections, Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, Burten, Bell, Carr Development Corporation, Morelands Group, Shaker Square Area Development, 4th District Police Department, New Era Cleveland, Holy Grove Baptist Church, Calvary Hill Church of God in Christ, Shaker Square Alliance, and more


A Cooperative Folk School in Alabama  •  Northern Alabama

Sand Mountain Cooperative Education Center is partnering with Renew Birmingham to build a folk school serving both rural Guntersville and urban Birmingham. Residential fellows and local leaders will address isolation by developing programs to solve shared problems and create economic opportunity at a time when in-person connection is increasingly rare.

Partner Organizations: Renew Birmingham


Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange  •  Kentucky (statewide)

Art of the Rural has worked for more than a decade across 80 counties in Kentucky, building a vibrant network of local leaders who come together to build relationships, find common purpose, and collaborate on their communities’ hardest challenges. They are accelerating their impact by providing micro-grants, organizing live events, and supporting their members to lead community-driven problem-solving on issues ranging from opioid addiction to data center policy across the state.

Partner Organizations: Greater Clark Foundation, Estill Development Alliance, Kentucky Arts Council


Courageous Neighbors Initiative  •  Southwest Florida

Resetting the Table is bringing its award-winning approach to Southwest Florida — a region where strong conservative identity, historic divides, economic strain, and rapid change are colliding. This project will build a cross-class, cross-partisan, and multiracial coalition delivering concrete local impact on issues like housing, hunger, and disaster resilience.

Partner Organizations: Center for Christian Thought and Ethics, Maroon House and more