Citizen Journal Foundation Awarded $95,000 USDA Rural Business Grant
The federal grant will fund Project Hamilton, a program to bring McPherson County brick-and-mortar businesses online
MCPHERSON, Kan. — The Citizen Journal Foundation has been awarded a $95,000 Rural Business Development Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to launch Project Hamilton, a program that will help brick-and-mortar businesses in McPherson County establish and run an online presence. Combined with a $32,000 non-federal match, the award funds a $127,000 project that runs from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2027.
Project Hamilton is a cohort-based program that pairs local business owners with hands-on help getting their operations online. The foundation will deliver the program with two partners: the McPherson Industrial Development Company, which is recruiting and sourcing cohort businesses, and McPherson College, whose students and faculty will provide the hands-on work.
The founding cohort is invite-only and anchored in McPherson County. Its first five members, selected in August, include a coffee shop, a print shop, a laundromat, a chiropractic office and a sound equipment business. The program is designed to become self-sustaining, with expansion to other Kansas communities planned as a future phase.
The Citizen Journal Foundation is a McPherson-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to fund journalism and community activities that the market alone won't sustain. As programs prove they can pay their own way, the foundation plans to hand them off and shift its focus toward funding investigative journalism and independent local content creators.
The foundation is the nonprofit counterpart to citizen journal, the digital local news platform that publishes daily newsletters and a mobile app for more than 20 Kansas communities, with operations in four other states. The news platform is operated by loql LLC, a for-profit McPherson company. The foundation is a separate legal entity with its own board that holds grants, including the USDA award, and directs them to public-interest work.
USDA Rural Development's Rural Business Development Grant program provides technical assistance and training for small rural businesses, and only public bodies, tribes and nonprofits are eligible to apply.
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