Wed, July 9 – Mapleton, OH 🇺🇸

Some towns break your heart. Others rebuild it.

I’ve walked streets where industry left nothing but shuttered shops and silence. I’ve seen communities dimmed by decades of disinvestment. But the town of Mapleton, Ohio? It wasn’t done fighting.

Mapleton’s Main Street had been hanging by a thread—its storefronts battered by time, its energy grid as shaky as the rusting lamp posts overhead. But beneath the cracked pavement was a pulse. A beat. The stubborn rhythm of a town that refused to disappear.

And when they called me, Mr. Grant Money, they weren’t asking for charity. They were asking for a comeback.

🌆 Setting the Scene

Mapleton is one of those places you’d miss if you blinked while exiting off I-71. Once a proud manufacturing hub, it fell hard when the factory jobs vanished in the '90s. The town never quite recovered. Downtown became more memory than marketplace, and the old power infrastructure—designed for peak steel production in 1957—couldn’t keep up with the new climate, the new needs, or the new generation trying to stay.

The situation boiled over during the blackout of July 2023. A heatwave knocked out power for 72 hours, shutting down the only pharmacy, the small hospital annex, and every fan trying to keep elders cool. It wasn’t just inconvenient. It was life-threatening.

That week, the mayor made a declaration: “We’re not waiting for the grid to save us. We’re building our own.”

And just like that, Main Street got a second chance. This time—with a microgrid.

🎯 The Visionaries

At the center of the revival was Mayor Janelle Brooks, a former high school science teacher turned civic lightning rod. Janelle had lived in Mapleton her whole life, taught three generations of families, and didn’t believe in waiting for miracles. “If we want resilience,” she said, “we better start wiring it ourselves.”

She assembled a team. Buckeye Energy Co-op, a regional nonprofit that had been experimenting with solar battery arrays in rural schools, stepped in with technical muscle. GridWise Labs, an Ohio State–affiliated energy think tank, offered modeling tools and student engineers. But perhaps most importantly, Main Street United, a coalition of small business owners, farmers, and retired electricians, offered sweat equity and local wisdom.

Their idea: convert Mapleton’s aging downtown into a community-powered microgrid—complete with solar rooftops, shared battery storage, and islanding capacity that would allow critical services to keep running during future outages. This wasn’t just about backup power. It was about energy independence, economic reinvestment, and civic dignity.

They had momentum. What they didn’t have was funding.

That’s where I came in.

💼 Enter Mr. Grant Money

When Janelle called me, she didn’t send a glossy deck or a cold proposal. She sent a voicemail. No fluff—just her voice, clear and unshaken:

“Mr. Grant Money, we’ve got the guts, we’ve got the grid model, and we’ve got the will. But we need $4.8 million to flip the switch. Can you help?”

I smiled. Because this? This was the kind of project I live for.

The first thing I did was dig in. I reviewed load forecasts, resiliency maps, and town hall minutes from a folding chair in the Mapleton library. I talked to the barber who hadn’t had A/C in his shop in three summers, and the florist whose coolers had melted three grand worth of product when the power failed.

And I saw it—clear as day. This wasn’t just a grid upgrade. This was a Main Street resurrection.

✍️ Crafting the Winning Application

Here’s a secret: grant applications don’t win on data alone. They win on urgency, storytelling, and solution precision.

We anchored our proposal to the DOE’s Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas (ERA) program, a $1B carve-out from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law meant for exactly this kind of community: overlooked, underserved, but ready to act.

But we didn’t stop there. I layered in additional leverage from:

• USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) for solar

• A state-level Ohio Clean Energy Grant targeting municipal innovation

• A philanthropic match from the Midwest Resilience Foundation

We framed Mapleton’s project as a rural resiliency prototype, scalable to thousands of towns just like it. And we told it through people:

There was Emmitt, the war vet who ran the town’s only diner and had installed solar panels by hand, one weekend at a time.

There was Alisha, 16, who’d organized a petition to power her school’s computer lab during outages so students wouldn’t miss college app deadlines.

There was history. Grit. And ambition.

And with GridWise’s predictive models showing that Mapleton’s microgrid could reduce outage-related losses by 84% and cut emissions by 62% over 10 years—we had the numbers to back the passion.

We submitted. We waited. And we hoped.

📢 The Approval & Aftermath

The notice came by email, but it may as well have been a fireworks show.

Mapleton was awarded $5.1 million in DOE and USDA grants, with additional private match funding bringing the total to just over $6 million.

It was more than enough. It was everything.

Construction began within four months. Solar panels were installed atop the pharmacy, post office, and community center. Battery storage systems were wired into a central vault under the town green. And a local workforce retraining program launched in parallel—certifying 22 former coal workers in microgrid tech within the first six weeks.

When the next blackout came—on a stormy April night in 2024—Main Street glowed like a beacon. The pharmacy stayed open. The diner brewed coffee. Elderly residents stayed safe in cooled shelters powered by local energy.

And something else came alive too: the economy. Visitors returned. Pop-ups opened. Mapleton’s first coworking space launched in a restored auto garage with clean power and fiber internet.

They didn’t just rebuild Main Street. They rewired the future.

🔑 Grant Money Takeaways

Every grant win reveals more than a check—it shows a blueprint. Here’s what Mapleton taught me, and what every civic leader, changemaker, and entrepreneur should remember:

1. Don’t wait to be rescued.
   Build coalitions now. Resilience begins with local power—literally and politically.

2. Go beyond the grid.
   Frame your energy project in terms of human safety, economic revival, and emotional narrative.

3. Stack your strategy.
   Mapleton didn’t chase one grant—they built a funding ecosystem. That's how you de-risk and win.

4. Use voices, not just voltages.
   We won this grant because it wasn't just about panels—it was about people.

5. Think local, pitch national.
   The story may start in your ZIP code, but funders want to know how it can scale. Make your town a testbed, not just a beneficiary.

💬 Discussion Questions

1. What would it mean for your town or neighborhood to have its own microgrid?

2. Mapleton didn’t wait for top-down solutions. What’s a challenge in your community that could benefit from a locally led energy or infrastructure solution?

3. Have you ever experienced a blackout that impacted your health, job, or safety?

4. What stories—from residents, businesses, or history—could make your community’s grant application unforgettable to reviewers?

5. If Mr. Grant Money rolled into your town tomorrow, what project would you pitch him—and why does it deserve investment now?