Regional councils push Rural Catalyst grant to help small-town projects and capacity

Committee members heard testimony on Senate Bill 2390, a proposed Rural Catalyst challenge grant designed to help towns of up to 8,500 people finance community projects and to encourage regional collaboration and philanthropy.

Don Mant, executive director of the Red River Regional Council, told the committee the grant complements other project-related proposals and helps small towns that do not qualify for some state or federal programs. Mant described several local projects that would qualify, including a Gilby community-center HVAC replacement (estimated at about $35,000), a $20 million Park River wellness center, and a $1.4 million Walsh County child-care expansion that remained $370,000 short despite more than a dozen funding sources.

Why it matters: Supporters said many small towns lack the staff capacity and matching funds required by federal programs and that a challenge-grant model with a match requirement would leverage philanthropic and local investments. Mant and other witnesses pointed to widespread regional council success: councils helped secure hundreds of millions in projects statewide over five years and directly assisted communities where grocery stores or pools have closed.

Program design and capacity: The Rural Catalyst proposal would set aside funding for very small towns (the policy committee had proposed a 50% set-aside to communities under 1,000), encourage matches in local cash or volunteer hours, and allow regional councils to provide grant-writing and project-development assistance. Don Mant and other advocates also referenced House Bill 1524, which would boost staffing capacity at regional councils to help more projects get through application, permitting and construction.

Support and examples: Peril Grossman of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association reiterated the association’s support for the measure, praising reporting and transparency features and the match requirement. Testimony noted frequent disaster declarations in Region 4, which increase the need for regional planning and resilient infrastructure.

Questions from senators centered on funding tiers, how matches would be evaluated, and whether the grant process would be simple for small projects while scalable for larger proposals. Witnesses asked the committee to permit simpler, lower-burden applications for smaller projects and more detailed review for large ones, with regional councils helping to prepare applications.

Ending: Committee members closed the public testimony; no formal vote on SB 2390 was recorded in the transcript.