Friends and neighbors,
I want to thank you for all you’ve done to support rural communities this year. Your engagement with our work, your involvement locally, and your financial contributions to the Center strengthen rural America in integral ways.
If you haven’t gotten a chance to look through our 2025 calendar, which also serves as our 2024 annual report, please find a digital copy here. Each year, I look forward to this calendar, an early present filled with stories, photos, and accomplishments that celebrate the meaningful changes we’re creating together.
Now, with less than a month to go, you have the opportunity to multiply your impact in small town America. Thanks to a small group of generous changemakers, the Center has a special limited-time matching gift campaign underway.
Gifts from repeat donors are currently being doubled, and gifts from first-time donors are being tripled.
We need your help to meet this match challenge. Will you make a special gift today? Gifts must be made by Dec. 31, 2024, to be multiplied.
First-time donors will also receive our 2025 wall calendar in the mail.
Below are a few of my favorite moments from the year. Thank you again for bringing these stories to life.
Your care for inclusive communities pushed the Center to bridge language and cultural barriers. In 12 small towns this year, your support enabled us to host focused training sessions on topics like language justice and intercultural communication. These workshops brought both new and established townspeople together to connect, understand, and enrich their communities side by side.
Your priority for practical, innovative solutions allowed us to roll out new programs, like Solar for All, that cultivate rural resilience. We’re transforming clean energy accessibility and affordability for thousands of Nebraskans.
Your spirit of generosity and equity brought resources to underserved rural folks of all ages as they reached for their small business dreams. In our inaugural Indigenous Youth Entrepreneurship Workshop, a group of 10 young people joined us for a full day of learning about the intricacies of starting their own businesses and transforming their visions into reality. At the end of the day, each received a $500 mini grant to kickstart their business venture.
Your engagement on policy issues helped us advocate for tangible solutions on pressing matters like food security, on-farm conservation, and support for independent producers and processors. Among other wins, our shared advocacy efforts helped 76,000 families feed their kids through Nebraska’s Summer EBT program.
Can we count on your continued support to help us bring resources and resilience across rural America? Remember, first-time gifts will be tripled, and repeat gifts will be doubled, if made this month.
We have big plans for 2025. With your support, we will expand on our work to:
Strengthen communities by addressing the critical rural housing shortage, making hard-to-find, affordable capital available for projects, like the 10-unit apartment complex in Grand Island, Nebraska, that we financed in 2024. These apartments will provide quality housing for new immigrants and refugees.
Build the next generation of ag-environmental leaders by developing peer cohorts at the intersection of farming and conservation. We’ll continue to match new producers with experienced mentors like we’ve done the past three years in our Conservation Fellowship Program. As a result of this program alone, 24 new farmers are implementing conservation strategies that enhance their farms and communities.
Reach even more aspiring rural entrepreneurs to provide them with the tools and access to capital to find their niche and make their small towns great places to live, work, and thrive. In 2024, we crossed the $40 million mark in total loans placed since we began lending in 1993. In 2025, we’ll continue filling gaps in small business education and financing to ensure rural entrepreneurs' dreams have a chance of coming true.
Thank you for giving us such reasons to celebrate and for considering a year-end gift to create more meaningful change in the new year.
Your partnership is what makes this shared journey toward rural prosperity possible.
Happy holidays!
Dennis Demmel
Board President
P.S. You can make an online gift at cfra.org/give or send a check to P.O. Box 136, Lyons, NE 68038. Gifts made now through the end of the year will be multiplied: first-time gift amounts will be taken x 3 and gifts from people who have given in the past x 2.
Feature photo: In May, a group in Norfolk, Nebraska, participated in a language justice workshop and walked away with tools to connect with their neighbors across perceived divides. Will you make a gift today to expand these resources and create more welcoming communities?
