PIN Community Investment Launch

May 27, 2026, 2:05pm EDT

By: The Partnership for Innovation

Over the past five years, PIN has worked alongside communities, researchers, startups, universities, nonprofits, and public-sector leaders to help move innovation into practice.

Across that work, one challenge has surfaced consistently:

Strong ideas often struggle in the space between early momentum and long-term implementation.

Communities may identify urgent needs but lack the technical or operational capacity to move projects forward. Researchers and startups may develop promising solutions without trusted pathways into real-world environments. Early pilots can generate excitement, but sustaining the work requires coordination, continuity, and long-term partnership across sectors.

Over time, PIN has helped fill parts of that gap through applied research partnerships, talent placement, stakeholder engagement, and cross-sector collaboration throughout Georgia and the Southeast.

The launch of the PIN Community Investment Program represents the next step in that work.

The program is designed to support community-centered innovation projects through a combination of deployment funding, operational support, student and workforce engagement, and partnership development. The focus is not simply on generating new ideas, but on helping communities build the conditions necessary for implementation, testing, refinement, and long-term impact.

Projects supported through PIN have already addressed challenges connected to:

public health
emergency response
workforce development
entrepreneurship
flood resilience
digital infrastructure
community research
rural economic development

What ties those efforts together is a shared approach: local leadership, cross-sector collaboration, applied research, and long-term continuity.

As more communities look for practical ways to move innovation into action, the PIN Community Investment Program creates a clearer pathway for organizations and partners seeking support to build, test, and scale projects over time.

Applications are now open for eligible organizations, researchers, startups, nonprofits, and community partners interested in collaborative, place-based innovation work.

Additional information about priorities, timelines, and eligibility will continue to roll out in the coming weeks.

Learn More about The PIN Community Impact Program.