A community infrastructure nonprofit

Connection shouldn't stop where the pavement does.

Upward Now brings broadband, technology, small business infrastructure, and basic-needs support to rural communities — building the structure a place needs to lift itself.

Our coverage is need driven. Not cost driven. Not profit driven.

Get involved See our programs

Our mission

To empower the growth of a community and to provide a solid structure that produces self-healing solutions to fill the gaps of the communities we serve.

Rural communities are rarely short on capability. They're short on infrastructure — the connection, capital, and services that everywhere else takes for granted. When a provider decides a county isn't worth the wire, the cost of that decision lands on families, schools, clinics, and every small business that can't get online.

Upward Now exists to fill those gaps, and to build them so they stay filled after we're done.

Our mission

Programs

Six ways we close the gap

Each program stands on its own — and each one makes the others work better. Broadband makes job training possible. Job training fills the businesses the incubator launches. Stability at home makes all of it stick.

Is your community still waiting?

Name the county. Requests are how the map gets drawn — every one of them tells us where the gap actually is.

Takes ten seconds. Goes straight to the people who plan the builds.

How we work

Build it so it heals itself

A solution that depends on us forever isn't a solution — it's a subscription. Everything we build is designed to be handed over.

  1. 01

    Listen first

    We go to the community before we go to the map. What's missing, what's already working, and who's already doing it — that conversation sets the scope, not a coverage projection.

  2. 02

    Fill the gap

    We build or provide the specific thing that's absent: the tower, the workspace, the training cohort, the pantry route. Need sets the priority; cost sets the method, never the decision.

  3. 03

    Build local capacity

    Local people are trained to run and maintain what we install. Local businesses become the vendors. Local organizations hold the relationships.

  4. 04

    Hand it over

    The structure stays, the ownership shifts, and the community carries it forward — able to repair and extend it without us. That's what self-healing means.

"We don't measure success by how much we're needed. We measure it by how little we're needed a few years from now."

How we work

Get involved

Communities lift themselves. We just help carry.

There's a role here whether you have an hour, a skill, a building, or a budget.

Give

Funding decides how far the wire goes and how many families the route reaches. Recurring gifts let us commit to builds that take more than one season.

Donate

Volunteer

Tower and install crews, device refurbishing, tutoring and digital literacy, pantry routes, business mentorship, grant writing, and translation.

Volunteer with us

Partner

Counties, co-ops, school districts, clinics, churches, employers, and ISPs — partnership is how a gap gets closed permanently instead of temporarily.

Start a conversation

Request service

If your community is unserved, underserved, or simply keeps getting told "not yet" — tell us. Requests are how we find the need.

Tell us what's missing

Contact

Tell us about your community

Whether you're looking for service, offering help, or exploring a partnership, the fastest way to reach us is this form. We read every message.