We build vibrant communities through culture, sustainability, and opportunity.

New Sun Rising (NSR) designs and implements programs that create economic opportunity, solve social challenges, and strengthen community vibrancy. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, we serve as an educator, resource provider, connector, and activator of neighborhood-scale innovation. Our focus is on disinvested communities and how regenerative growth strategies can be utilized for equitable development.

New Sun Rising’s framework for co-powering grassroots change was born in the aftermath of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. After witnessing the traumatic disruption of social and economic ecosystems in Pittsburgh and New Orleans, the organization’s founders began to question what the nature of these neighborhoods would become. An immediate response took the shape of practical capacity building and fiscal sponsorship services for grassroots leaders and their efforts to rebuild. The outcome of these early projects created networks of hope and an undeniable shift in neighborhood perception.

Further research demonstrated a lack of support for emerging entrepreneurs in disinvested neighborhoods, especially when compared to the Silicon Valley-inspired high growth tech sector. Skewing investments heavily towards extractive socioeconomic ventures has resulted in unbalanced and inequitable opportunity in local ecosystems. And, when positive shifts in local identity and livability eventually do occur, neighborhoods often become the target of large-scale outside investment, which can result in the negative impacts of gentrification and displacement.

Building upon practical lessons learned while supporting hundreds of community projects and businesses since 2005, the NSR Vibrant Communities Framework emerged as a practical solution to activate real change through local ownership. This toolkit is adaptive and implemented through local partners to instigate regenerative development: built from the bottom up and from the inside out.

NSR Vibrant Communities creates competitive advantages for communities and entrepreneurs who are facing barriers to succeed in the current system. New Sun Rising provides operational support while incubating social enterprises, nonprofits, collaboratives, and innovation hubs. Our philosophy is that the economic, social, and intellectual opportunities of revitalization should be directed and owned by local stakeholders.

New Sun Rising believes that transformational community change requires a commitment to grassroots, socially minded leaders. By unlocking authentic human potential, we’re building an engaged, diverse, and cooperative ecosystem with solutions that not only improve your community – but can improve communities around the world.