Policy That Changes Lives
Building power toward shared economic prosperity, a healthy climate, and a thriving democracy
From the Ground Up
Rural Democracy Initiative provides tools and support to rural groups that not only educate voters, but also unite communities around powerful coalitions, research policy and draft solutions, and ensure effective implementation across our communities. Our resources help our grantees understand, mobilize for, and influence the policies they care about most.
We want our rural neighbors to feel the impacts of policy improvements in their everyday lives. We fund national campaigns to advance important rural issues like access to healthcare and lower prescription drug prices, supporting workers, and reducing the undue influence of giant corporations. Our state and locally focused grantees organize to defend core freedoms like reproductive care, accurate education, voting access, and fair representation, while advancing policies like education and child care that build the economy from the middle out and the ground up.
In 2026, these groups are also on the front lines of protecting democratic processes in rural counties — pushing back on voter suppression and intimidation, fighting disinformation with clear, nonpartisan information, and helping neighbors connect federal policy choices to the realities of daily life.
Featured Report
Rural Policy Action Report
Priority legislation and executive action that supports working families and strengthens rural communities. The report also highlights the numerous policy successes and the ongoing challenges people in rural communities face.
Grantee Spotlights
Rural Democracy gives our grantees the tools they need to transform our communities.
Our Grantees
Elevating Trusted Voices in Rural Communities
Trusted rural voices are shaping debates on pesticides, tariffs, and health care, with support from Iowa Farmers Union Education Foundation and Main Street Alliance.
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Improving Rural Courts
The heavy ramifications of less serious crimes have led RDI grantee Black Voters Matter to introduce warrant clinics in numerous communities.
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Youth Campaign to Protect Right to Abortion Care
Organizers at Loud Light engage young voters year-round, and Rural Democracy’s flexible support enabled them to make a timely shift to preserve abortion access in Kansas. Through a “joyful organizing” approach, they built a youth organizing campaign that harnessed Kansans’ love of horses and horse culture while educating voters on misleading ballot language and other issues surrounding the vote.
Read moreShared Prosperity
Rural Democracy supports groups working on popular rural issues like farming, clean and low-cost energy, safe and affordable housing, health care, good jobs, and supports for small business. Our grantees protect our communities from many of the worst voter suppression and gerrymandering proposals. These same groups mobilize rural voters to secure voting rights, access to abortion care, and pathways to college for students regardless of immigration status. Rural coalitions have also run successful campaigns to increase the minimum wage, support quality education, and develop tools and opportunities working families need to care for themselves and their loved ones.
Rural Voices Shape Policy
Rural communities are essential in successful statewide and national coalitions, just as rural support is essential to passing legislation. Therefore, rural communities must have a leadership role in describing the issues and designing solutions.
Many of our rural policy priorities are also priorities in cities. For example, working families struggle to find affordable, safe, and stable housing in both rural communities and the biggest cities. Yet the specific housing solutions may differ due to access to private capital, limited sewer and water infrastructure, and the scale of resources available to local governments. By supporting rural leadership, Rural Democracy is contributing to successful coalitions that unite across geography with the power to hold government officials accountable.
Federal Policy Cohort
Rural communities feel federal policy decisions in very concrete ways, shaping everything from hospital funding and energy bills to farm costs and the fate of immigrant neighbors. To help rural people influence those decisions, the Rural Democracy program launched a Federal Policy Cohort that supports local leaders to connect national policy debates to everyday life and mobilize their communities.
The cohort brought together 20 grantees in key regions for coaching, funding, timely policy research, and a peer learning network focused on federal issues. Together, they hosted 86 in-person events to explain how federal policy shows up in people’s lives, placed more than 180 earned media stories and op-eds, collected tens of thousands of petition signatures and letters to members of Congress, and reached more than 30 million people through digital campaigns. This work helps move critical votes in Washington and builds stronger local organizations, new volunteers, and rural voters who are ready to stay engaged in 2026 and beyond.
Rural is Ready for More
Polling shows rural voters support federal investment in communities, passing a new voting rights act, allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs, and closing tax loopholes on giant corporations. Rising housing costs dominate the concerns of rural voters in many states, and 74% of these voters agree that abortion should be legal. In a recent poll of rural battleground voters, 92% agreed that we should shift government support from corporate agribusinesses to small and independent family farms.
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Rural Democracy Network
We invest in a network that creates real change for rural communities. We work alongside over 168 organizations in rural areas, towns, and small cities in more than 23 states.
Learn moreCommunications
Rural Democracy drives effective communications by establishing local trusted messengers, reaching people through local press, and showing the connection between national talking points and local impacts.
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