Thread Capital, a community development financial institution founded by the Rural Center, begins making loans to small businesses throughout the state after determining there is a need for more small-dollar lending in underserved areas of the state.
To help close the statewide digital divide, the Rural Center lobbied for the development of a state fund to support last-mile broadband deployment. Administered by the Division of Broadband & Digital Opportunity at the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology (GREAT) Program provides competitive grants to private internet providers to build last-mile high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved and economically distressed rural areas.