Megan Langley accepts a Main Street Excellence Award honoring the Strong Farm Incubator’s commitment to innovative workforce solutions from Gov. Doug Burgum, left, and Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller, right, in May 2024.

SOURIS – Strengthen ND is working to do just what its name implies. Making North Dakota stronger starts with rural communities, nonprofits and entrepreneurs, and it takes a broad-based effort, according to founder and executive director Megan Langley.

“We really have a multi-disciplinary approach to supporting rural North Dakota by providing technical assistance, actual boots on ground work and then also being an advocate and grant maker,” Langley said. “At Strengthen ND, we are all about supporting long term community livability and viability, especially for those rural and frontier communities. So to do that, we have our three pillar strategy. The first is building nonprofit and rural community capacity. So that’s where our AmeriCorps programming fits in. This year, we will be placing about 110 people all across the state to provide extra people power in communities.”

Strengthen ND is in its third year of offering a state-based AmeriCorps program, which enables the organization to recruit and place AmeriCorps workers within North Dakota.

“We grew from about 30 AmeriCorps positions in year one. Now we have the ability to place up to 110 positions throughout the state this year,” Langley said.

The goal has been to recruit from within the community. Much of the recruitment success has been among retired individuals who want to remain engaged in their communities while earning some supplemental income and obtaining educational funds for their children or grandchildren, Langley said.

She said the program has been incredibly helpful in communities such as Wing, where an AmeriCorps worker is organizing community events and writing grants, and with organizations such as Bakken Oil Rush Ministry, which eventually hired its AmeriCorps worker as staff to help with its thrift store, meal program and other client work in Watford City.

In Minot, Strengthen ND has placed several AmeriCorps members with organizations, including the Empire Volleyball Club and Film Dudes, a nonprofit whose mission is to educate students and teachers in filmmaking.

Along with capacity building, another pillar of Strengthen ND is fostering resilient, community-driven solutions, which includes its Strong Farm Incubator and small production agriculture activities.

Five participants have gone through the incubator program, a collaborative effort of Stoll Farms, Baldwin Greenhouse & Nursery and Strengthen ND. Four are being retained for a second year in the three-year program, while another crop of participants is coming into its first year of the program, Langley said.

Land is provided at Baldwin to help startup farmers test their businesses and refine their operating models. However, newcomers who may be distant from Baldwin but have their own plot of land also can have access to the mentorship and classes.

With a $675,000 grant from the federal Economic Development Administration and $300,000 from the North Dakota Rural Food Sustainability grant program, Strengthen ND is moving to the next phase of its vision for the incubator project.

Construction is expected to start in July and finish in December on about a 1,200 square foot building that will include a retail space for selling manufactured products. There will be a commercial kitchen, classroom and cold storage.

“We’ll be excited to see the potential for that facility in terms of farm to school opportunities, farm to institution opportunities,” Langley said. It also creates opportunities for processing of foods that don’t sell due to blemishes or issues that leave them edible but less attractive to consumers. Those manufactured products will be able to be distributed by a refrigerated mobile market truck to consumers at nursing homes, schools, groceries and other end markets.

“This could be a really powerful way to bridge that gap that a lot of local foods producers are encountering,” Langley said. “They have this great product. Now, how do we get it to people? How do we get it to where it can be sold?”

Strengthen ND moved its base office to Souris last year, but it has team members across the state, including at Des Lacs and Glenburn in the Minot area. From its locations, it works to advance regional priorities, which is the third pillar for the organization.

“That’s where our work around Senate Bill 2097 is coming forward,” Langley said. “We’re seeing just such a huge need and demand by rural communities for some type of long term, flexible funding source, specifically for communities of less than 1,000.”

SB 2097 would create an endowment fund to support grants to communities of less than 1,000 residents.

“I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve received phone calls from people in communities who say, ‘Our community center needs a new roof. There’s nowhere for us to find grant money. Can you help?’ Or the community of Mercer needs a new building right now or the community of Munich needs a new lagoon, or there’s a great grant program that’s coming up but the community has no available match dollars that are required to participate in the program. This happens over and over and over again, and it’s been happening ever since we started,” Langley said.

“We’ve talked internally about ‘what does a statewide flexible funding source look like?'” she said. “How do you truly provide a funding source or grant making program that is accessible to everyone, not just nonprofits or communities that have grant writers or others that work in that capacity, but that is truly accessible to everyone?”

Conversations came to a head when community members suggested looking to the state for help. Discussions with elected officials led to the crafting of SB 2097.

The bill initially asked for a $50 million endowment fund under the State Investment Board, with an additional $5 million available for immediate grants while the endowment gets set up. The fund manager would be determined through soliciting competitive proposals from rural grant makers. A nine-member board of individuals who live and work in communities of 1,000 or smaller would determine the grant awards.

“It will be a grant making program designed by rural community members for rural community members,” Langley said, noting the bill itself has been designed and championed by rural communities.

The Senate cut the size of the endowment to $5 million and eliminated any immediate grant money before passing and sending the bill to the House.

Langley said a $5 million fund would allow $175,000-$250,000 to be made available for grants each year.

“That is a significant amount of money,” she said, while adding “We’re also looking at 307 communities that are eligible, that are desperately needing funds.”

Strengthen ND has been working with legislators to restore some money to the bill. Language in the bill also allows for the fund to accept private donations.

Although part of its mission from its start, grant writing assistance has been a community need that Strengthen ND has struggled to fully address.

“We don’t have the capacity to help everybody,” Langley said. “It’s a huge need across the state.”

She also said Strengthen ND is working on a two-fold solution.

Direct solutions include finding community-based grant writers who can assist several organizations or developing a team of grant writers who can work statewide. A less direct solution is being tested in which the grant application process is simplified to not need a grant writer.

Communities applying to the Creative Community Solutions grant fund can submit audio files, two-page written narratives, bullet points or graphs to tell their stories. Strengthen ND has managed Creative Community Solutions as a partner of the Bush Foundation since 2021.

“If we want to be a truly accessible, grant making program that wants to find the best projects to invest in, regardless of what type of shiny package they come from, we need to change our processes so that you don’t need a professional grant writer to access our programs,” Langley said.

One of Strengthen ND’s favorite projects funded through Creative Community Solutions is the community-owned financing tool created in 2022 in Sheyenne, a community of about 185 residents.

“They don’t have a paid economic development staff. There’s not a JDA or an EDC or a city auditor that can write grants within the community of Sheyenne. It’s all volunteers. They had not been able to access some traditional grants because they didn’t have available match money. But they had really big ideas,” Langley said.

Their idea was a community development fund that could be sustained on its own proceeds.

Langley said the community has been renovating houses to create livable spaces to serve a housing need and grow its population. It currently is on its third housing project, she said. Proceeds from home sales go back into the fund. Starting with $150,000 and leveraging about $400,000 in state and federal grants, the fund still has just over $150,000, she said.

“It’s one of those things where they said, ‘We know it’s a good return on our investment in our community. We know where we can make meaningful progress. Just give us the money and let us go,” Langley said. “That’s just been such a great reminder of understanding that communities know what they need. They know how to move their community forward. They don’t need a consultant to come in and say, ‘Well, you need this, or you need that.’ They already know what they need. Just give them the resources so they can go and do it.”