Wildheart.

The Appalachian Community Fund (ACF) was established in 1987 to provide grants to groups promoting progressive change in the central region of Appalachia (east Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia and all of West Virginia ). Established to bring new resources into the region for community organizing and social change, ACF also seeks to build a long term resource base and to expand community philanthropy in the region. Grants are given to community-based organizations that address underlying causes of the economic and social distress of the region, and are targeted to organizations and communities with little or no access to other moneys.



We do this through:



* Providing resources for community organizing efforts

* Implementing strategies for social change through grantmaking

* Offering services and options to donors

* Creating comprehensive development strategies in order to become a sustainable

resource in the region.



The specific problems ACF addresses are the lack of resources, especially financial resources, that organizations need in order to attack systemic problems of poverty, racism, and social inequity in Appalachia. We support low-income people organizing themselves to address problems in their own communities and neighborhoods, and we support the development and growth of organizations to be vehicles for change in the community .