Treasured landscapes. Celebrated heritage. Resourceful people.

Our rural counties face tremendous challenges. In North Carolina, Resourceful Communities creates opportunities that preserve the rural landscape, lift people out of poverty, and celebrate the state’s unique culture.

Working with a network of over 250 grassroots and community organizations across the state, we take a balanced “triple bottom line” approach that focuses on environmental stewardship, sustainable economic development and social justice. We help partners meet challenges by building on local assets — people, heritage, land and water — to create sustainable communities.

What we do...

Resourceful Communities provides a structure and supportive services to our ever-growing network of partner organizations around a triple bottom line approach that addresses sustainable community economic development, environmental conservation and social justice.   We do our work through four major programs:

Capacity Building:  From direct technical assistance to a small grants program, we help build our partners' capacity at the grassroots level.

Innovation and Demonstration:  We help our grassroots partners become leaders in developing projects that demonstrate innovative approaches that blend conservation, sustainable community economic development and social justice

Movement Building:  Through on-going regional leadership and organizational development training workshops, we help build a network of rural leaders who understand and implement the triple bottom line.

Policy and Advocacy:  Engagement of grassroots leaders in state-level policy and funding initiatives has helped to grow local and state-level support for alternative approaches to economic development and environmental protection.

Photo credits:
Jo Gravley, 'Our Partners',  Resourceful Communities
Natalie Abbassi, 'Homepage', Resourceful Communities