Entrepreneurship Rooted in Rural Communities
GRO is a long-term, community-centered approach to rural entrepreneurship in Oregon.
Growing Rural Oregon supports local leadership teams working to build vibrant, resilient entrepreneurial ecosystems. These systems create places where new ideas can flourish and where the people who call these communities home can turn their talents into lasting economic and civic impact.
GRO’s Community-Centered Approach
Rather than relying solely on outside investment or tax incentives, GRO focuses on building from the strengths communities already have to support local people with the ideas, drive, and skills to grow businesses, create jobs, and lead meaningful change.
When a community joins the five-year GRO program, it receives an annual capacity grant, dedicated coaching and technical support, tools and training to grow local entrepreneurship, a peer network of other GRO communities, and a proven roadmap for grassroots economic development.
GRO Communities
GRO partners with rural communities that are ready to work collectively to strengthen local entrepreneurship. The program is designed for places where community leaders, local organizations, and aligned funders are working in partnership around a shared commitment to long‑term, locally led economic development.
About the GRO Framework
GRO partners with rural communities as they build and connect a system that supports local entrepreneurs in accessing the resources they need to grow their businesses. Over five years, GRO offers steady support tailored to each community’s starting point—whether they are just beginning or already have systems in place. The framework is flexible by design, allowing local leaders and partners to move at a pace that fits their goals and capacity as they build their local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
GRO recognizes that meaningful change takes time, especially in communities rooted in tradition. For that reason, the framework emphasizes long‑term investment, trusted relationships, and practical tools that communities can adapt and sustain to enhance the support system for small businesses starting or growing in their community. In addition to place‑based support, GRO helps connect communities through statewide networks and uses high‑quality data to strengthen rural economic development across Oregon.
“Every community has entrepreneurial talent, but every community does not have an entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
GRO Guiding Values & Beliefs
Every town has entrepreneurs who have ideas to make money and provide jobs, or to change the civic and non-profit landscape and improve the lives of their neighbors. The GRO framework provides local leaders with proven tools, resources, and access to financing to support entrepreneurial success.
Many small cities have limited staff with limited budgets who are tasked with complex and multifaceted work at a community level. Entrepreneurial ecosystem building, unlike traditional economic development, doesn’t require specialists to bid for big contracts, nor does it require special tax incentives to bring in jobs. The ecosystem is built with committed local residents who are given the knowledge, resources, and voice to build their economy in a way that caters to the unique nature of their place. Rural people know that they must take charge to improve their place and GRO gives them the reins!
Impacts and outcomes from entrepreneur-led development are incremental. Each year entrepreneurial ventures make new investments and hire some employees adding only modest pressure on a rural community’s ability to accommodate growth (e.g., housing, schools, childcare, etc.). As more entrepreneurial ventures grow, others fill voids to build capacity for that growth by expanding housing, childcare and other essentials to support work and population growth. Because entrepreneurial development typically does not require large tax abatements, local tax bases expand with this kind of growth, enabling cities, counties, and school districts to grow and sustainably accommodate economic and population growth!
None of our work is done without the direct involvement and support of local people. Our framework is built on outreach, involvement, voice, and ownership at the local level. We challenge locals to employ an entrepreneurial mindset, to celebrate and share successes, and use our framework to build networks of mentors, leaders, business people, and citizens. Building this ecosystem is a job that is owned and shared by the whole community – successes are celebrated collectively and networks created give support and advice when problems arise.
This model, over many years of use around the U.S., has shown that when rural economic development takes a grassroots approach and focuses on entrepreneurship, it not only has a major impact on newly created, growing, and transitioning small businesses, but creates positive changes that benefit the whole community.
e2’s system of entrepreneur-led development is the backbone of the GRO framework. Transforming work in communities like Ord, Nebraska; Keene, New Hampshire; Central Appalachia; and rural Minnesota have helped bring these communities back from economic challenges to reach new heights.
Over time, as these cities and many others like them have embraced entrepreneurship and seen their economies grow, the benefits have been enjoyed by all residents. Increased tax bases have brought more social services, streetscape improvements, and better schools. Better diversified and more stable economies are much more adaptive and prepared for change, and the support of local people and local ideas created unique amenities that inspired new resident in-migration and more robust investment in their cities.