AFN has officially launched its new Member Portal—a long-awaited, shared space designed to make it easier for members to securely connect, engage, and access the full breadth of the Network. You can read about the portal's functions and how to register here.
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Getting started is simple: members can either register a new organization or join one that has already been created. Once you submit your registration, AFN staff will review and approve your account. After that, you’ll receive a confirmation link and can bookmark portal.appalachiafunders.org for easy access moving forward.
If you run into any questions or hiccups along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out at kalista@appalachiafunders.org—we’re happy to help.
An important note: All members will need to register for the portal by the end of June to register for programs and access their materials.
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Ready to get involved? Sign up through the member portal for one of our upcoming programs or submit your ideas for future offerings.
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→ Communities of Practice: Ongoing, member-only, and practice-based peer-learning circles.
Existing or upcoming Communities of Practice are:
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Arts & Culture | July 21st, 2:00 PM EST
- CEOs Circle | August 3rd, 2:00 PM EST
- Cappalachia | August 12th, 11:00 AM EST
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Communications | August 20th, 1:00 PM EST
- Funders of Infrastructure and Civic Support | Summer 2026
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Workforce Enabler Funders | Summer 2026
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→ Learning Journeys: Time-bound, cohort-based learning experiences on a focused topic.
Existing or upcoming Learning Journeys are:
- The Art of Everyday Civics | Every last Wednesday of the month at 1 PM
- Funding for the Moment We’re In | In Development
- Appalachia 101 | In Development
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Blended Capital and Impact Investing 101 | Continues Summer 2026
*following the Pre-Gathering on Impact Investing, Learners are invited to continue this opportunity with continued sessions. While many of you were with us at Mission Investors Exchange, our team will be in touch very soon with the cadence for continued meetings. If you were not able to join our Pre-Gathering as a Learner, but would like to jump in now, please contact jess@appalachiafunders.org.
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→ Action Teams: Collaborative, action oriented formations focused on producing concrete outcomes (like a playbook, new fund, or solutions to regional challenges).
Existing or upcoming Action Teams are:
- Rural News Fund | Ongoing
- Appalachian Helene Fund | Ongoing
- Appalachian Capital Lab Active Investors | Launched at April AFN Gathering, click below to join.
Watch the recording of our rollout or explore our refreshed programs webpage for more info.
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Join us on the first Friday of the month for our network-wide Hurricane Helene Response Call. This is a space for sharing updates, ideas, and organizing around Helene Recovery and Community Resilience.
Use the button below to add the call to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!
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Partner Community Capital
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Awarded a USDA Farmer's Market Promotion grant!
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PCAP has been awarded a USDA Farmer's Market Promotion Program grant to help grow West Virginia's local food economy. This investment will expand training, resources, and market opportunities for farmers and food entrepreneurs across the state! Read the full press release here.
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Roberts Impact Investing Fund
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Appalachian Emerging Investors Fund
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The Ford Foundation, in partnership with the Roberts Impact Investing Fund, makes an investment in the next generation of talent with the AEIF, a student-driven investment program piloted across three universities, opened applications hoping for 50 students, 120 raised their hands. They weren’t just signing up for investment training; they were signaling that the next generation of venture capital talent doesn’t have to come from the coasts.
The program’s first cohort has completed, with 30 students earning credentials in venture capital fundamentals and 10 advancing to complete intensive due diligence capstone projects. Six of those students were selected into investment analyst roles with the fund, moving from classroom to capital allocation in a matter of months. These students are creating local pathways to capital formation, proving that tomorrow’s investors may well emerge from the very places that have been underrepresented for too long in traditional venture capital circles.
Read more here.
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When Locus was founded in 2006, their team set out with a bold vision for the future of community-focused financing in Virginia. Over the next two decades, that vision grew into more than $5 billion in nationwide impact, achieved alongside collaborators who share their commitment to mission‑driven innovation. Their belief in the power of transformative partnership isn’t new; it has guided them from the beginning.
Learn more about their 20 years of impact: https://locusimpact.org/about/annual-report/
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Asheville Recovers Together Announces $14.6M Small Business Grant Program for Helene-Impacted Businesses
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Network Events & Opportunities
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Fahe’s 2026 Annual Meeting will bring Members, partners, funders, policymakers, and other stakeholders together from September 22 - 22 in Huntington, WV to explore what our network is learning, building, and proving through Housing Can’t Wait and our collective work across Appalachia.
This year’s theme, Learning in Motion, reflects where they are as a network. They are not simply responding to the housing challenge. They are testing strategies, adapting our work, using data, strengthening visibility, and learning together in real time.
Learn more and submit session proposals here.
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Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
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2026 Investing in Rural America Conference
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The Richmond Fed’s 2026 Investing in Rural America Conference is upcoming! Mark your calendars for September 30 – October 2, 2026, as they gather at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina.
This year’s conference will showcase innovative strategies for rural prosperity across economic development, small business development, financial inclusion, workforce pathways, and more! Learn more here.
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Searching for an Accounting and Office Associate to join their team. The application will close when the position is filled. Learn more here.
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Fahe is seeking an Associate Project Manager to join the Projects Team. This role will support project implementation across a wide array of projects, maintain strong relationships with Fahe's diverse range of clients, and assist with grant compliance according to state, federal, and funder requirements.
Read more here.
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If you have news, an opportunity, grant, or webinar you would like for AFN to share in its next newsletter, please submit it through the member portal!
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This month's Opportunity Appalachia project reminds us that investment isn't always about creating something entirely new. Sometimes it's about connecting the pieces that are already there.
We're heading to Harlan, Kentucky, where the former Lewallen Hotel - once known as the "jewel of Appalachia" - is being restored as the Harlan Hotel. Built in 1922 during the county's coal boom, the five-story landmark sat at the center of downtown life. Soon, it will do so again.
The restored Harlan Hotel will feature 28 guest rooms, a lobby bar, meeting and arts space, and a sundries counter. Step outside the front door and you'll find Moonbow Tipple coffee shop and bookstore across the street. Around the corner sits Harlan County Beer Company with its outdoor stage and beer garden. Nearby are Portal Pizzeria, local boutiques, the Harlan History Museum, the Higher Ground multi-arts center, and the convention center. Within a short drive are Black Mountain, Kingdom Come State Park, Portal 31, Benham's Coal Museum, and a growing outdoor recreation economy. The Harlan Hotel is an investment in more than just lodging, it’s an investment in community life.
A recent feasibility study found that downtown Harlan needs additional lodging capacity “...due to the number of outdoor adventurers, history buffs, downtown festival goers, and cultural tourists that visit Harlan” (Opportunity Appalachia, 2025). Today, visitors often have to stay outside of downtown. That means fewer dollars spent walking Main Street, lingering after an event, or discovering a local business they hadn't planned to visit.
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The hotel helps solve that problem by creating a front door to the broader community.
The project is expected to create approximately 60 construction jobs and 25 permanent living-wage jobs with benefits, including opportunities for second-chance employees. More importantly, it strengthens an ecosystem that local entrepreneurs and community leaders have spent years building.
The financing is a patchwork quilt of historic tax credits, owner investment, foundation support, a community crowdfunding campaign, and additional public and private capital are all helping move the project forward. No single source carries the whole weight. Instead, each piece helps make the others possible.
Community revitalization rarely happens because of one transformational project. It happens because people invest in the relationships between projects. Housing supports employers. Arts support tourism. Tourism supports local businesses. Local businesses create the sense of place that holds and attracts the next generation of residents and entrepreneurs.
The Harlan Hotel demonstrates that investing in a community can mean investing in the connections that hold it together.
Members of AFN's network, like Appalachian Community Capital, are helping build those connections by aligning capital with local vision and local leadership. In Harlan, restoring one historic building is also an investment in a downtown, a tourism economy, and a community that has been laying the groundwork for its own future for years.
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Current.org | Rural News Fund Seeks to reinforce Appalachia's public broadcasters, local news outlets
By strengthening local news through funding and supporting a mix of public broadcasters and noncommercial and for-profit outlets, the fund aims both to boost civic engagement and to allow locals to reclaim the narrative in a region that has largely “been extracted from in every respect” and had its story told by “those outside of our region,” he said.
“We have an emergency-level situation when it comes to the decline in local news in our region,” Eller said. “If we have strong local news that people can trust and people can feel like they can leverage to tell their story, it may be the first time in our region’s history where our narrative about Appalachia and our people is defined by us, where we’re writing the elegy ourselves.”
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Power in Numbers | Does Voting Still Matter?
What might it take to build effective strategies, coalitions, and catalysts for change in the midterms, 2028, and beyond? In such a deeply polarized society, can we achieve a true multiracial democracy?
AFN's Executive Director, Ryan Eller, recently joined a roundtable for Power in Numbers, the new podcast from Indigenous House hosted by Crystal Echo Hawk, to explore these questions alongside other community leaders and experts.
Power in Numbers examines the political, economic, and cultural forces shaping Native and non-Native communities by blending data, research, and human stories to make complex trends more meaningful and personal.
The episode is out now - check it out on Indigenous House's digital platforms and YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaOYDsTSvcA
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Other News That Caught Our Eye
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