Center on Rural Innovation, Inc.
CORI Rural Opportunity Seed Fund
Hartland, VT
Seed Fund Support
Federal Share: $105,000.00
Local Match: $105,000.00
The Center on Rural Innovation (CORI) is launching the Rural Opportunity Seed Fund to address the capital gap in communities across rural America. Rural America is an untapped and often overlooked source of innovation and talent with less than 1% of all venture capital going to rural zip codes. CORI is a 501c3 action tank that is building a network of entrepreneurship centers that provide the backbone for new economy revitalization in communities across rural America. Each of these communities have high speed internet, partnerships with institutions of higher education and many are in or beside Opportunity Zones - which make them interesting places to nurture a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Center is currently working with nine locations across the country to build these centers and in the next year will bring communities together onto a single resource-sharing platform managed by CORI. Over the next three years, the project anticipates growing the number of communities to 20, 15 early-stage companies provided with seed funding, and 35 new job created for local Opportunity Zone community members.