On July 6, 2026, Gov. Mike Braun announced 22 grant awards through Indiana's Community Collaboration Fund. Several of them exist to teach ordinary business owners a skill that used to belong to software teams: building custom AI tools without writing code.
If you run a small business in Indiana and you have felt like the AI conversation is happening somewhere over your head, here is a signal worth reading. The state is now spending grant money to bring that conversation down to street level, into workshops for plumbers, microentrepreneurs, and Main Street owners.
What the state actually funded
The Community Collaboration Fund (CCF) is administered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC). It started as a pilot in October 2023 with $500,000 in initial grants. Braun opened the current round in February 2026 with up to $1 million available, and the July awards named the winners.
The 2026 round put $757,000 in state grant dollars behind 22 community-led projects, expected to support $1.18 million in total project investment once matched and leveraged funds are counted. Together the funded projects are expected to serve more than 6,000 current and aspiring entrepreneurs and small businesses across the state.
In state grant dollars behind 22 community-led projects, expected to serve more than 6,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses across Indiana.
Source: State of Indiana, 2026The stated focus of the round is helping owners "start and scale more quickly, access capital and new markets," and put technology and artificial intelligence to work. That last part is where four of the projects live.
The four AI projects, and what each one teaches
Four of the awards carry an explicit AI component. Read them together and a pattern shows up: the state is funding people to use AI in daily operations and, in two cases, to build with it.
AI in Action: From Learning to Implementation
Pantheon Educational Center received $15,500 for workshops and hands-on labs that help entrepreneurs and small-business owners fold AI tools into daily operations. It is run in partnership with the Southwest Indiana Small Business Development Center. The name says the intent: move owners from watching to doing.
AI Pocket Mentor
The University of Notre Dame received $39,956 to build and deploy a 24/7 AI-powered digital mentor for low-income and disadvantaged microentrepreneurs in northwest Indiana. It gives personalized guidance on pricing, marketing, hiring, and compliance. Think of it as an always-available advisor for owners who cannot afford to hire one.
The Builder's Room
Amplify Bloomington received $39,834 for a multi-week cohort program that teaches business owners to create custom digital tools using AI, with no coding experience required. This is the one to sit up for. Building your own tool used to mean hiring a developer. A publicly funded program now treats it as a teachable owner skill.
Trade Up Indiana
The Indiana Association of Plumbing, Heating, Cooling Contractors received $37,000 for an entrepreneurship and accelerator program aimed at licensed plumbers and HVAC technicians moving into business ownership. It includes regionally distributed workshops, individual coaching, and what the program describes as "a dedicated technology enablement component introducing AI-powered tools." The trades are being pulled up the same curve as everyone else.
What this means if you feel behind
When a state spends grant money to teach a skill, that skill has stopped being a novelty. It has become part of the floor.
That changes the fear a lot of owners carry. If the worry has been that everyone else already knows how to do this and you do not, the honest read is closer to the opposite: the on-ramps are being built right now, in Indiana, for people at exactly your starting point. A microentrepreneur in northwest Indiana, a plumber becoming an owner, a Bloomington shop owner who has never touched code: those are the named audiences for this money.
This maps directly onto how we think about growth at LaunchReady. The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency describes a climb from simply using AI toward building with it and eventually running whole workflows on it. The Builder's Room, teaching owners to make custom tools without coding, is a program built to move people up that climb. You do not jump to the top. You take the next rung.
The part these grants leave open
A workshop is a start, and starts are worth taking. What a workshop cannot do is run the tool for you after the last session ends.
That is the honest catch. Learning to build a custom AI helper is one thing. Keeping it running, feeding it your real business context, and trusting its output enough to act on it is the daily work that follows. Someone in your business has to own that. Often that someone is you, at least at first.
So the practical move is to treat a program like these as the door, not the destination. Walk through it, learn to build one small thing, then decide who in your business owns keeping it useful. That decision, more than any single tool, is what separates a business that dabbles in AI from one that actually runs on it.
Your next step
You do not need a grant to start. Pick one task in your business that eats an hour a week, and spend twenty minutes seeing whether an AI tool can take a first pass at it. That small rep is the same first step these funded programs are teaching, and it costs you nothing but the twenty minutes.
If you want a sense of where you stand before you start, The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency assessment gives you an honest read on your current level and the next rung to reach for.
Related reading: Level 4: The Commander (Context Engineer).
Sources
- Gov. Braun Strengthens Indiana Entrepreneurship Through Community Grants (State of Indiana)
- Governor Braun Strengthens Indiana Entrepreneurship Through Community Grants (WBIW)
- Gov. Braun Strengthens Indiana Entrepreneurship Through Community Grants (Grow Wabash County)
- Gov. Braun Announces Up to $1M Community Collaboration Fund (IEDC)
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can apply for the Community Collaboration Fund?
The CCF funds community-led, regionally driven organizations, not individual businesses directly. The 2026 recipients include universities, nonprofits, trade associations, and economic development groups. If you are an owner, the way in is usually through the programs these grantees run, like the workshops and cohorts described above.
Are all of the funded projects about AI?
No. Four carry an explicit AI component. The full round covers a broad set of entrepreneurship goals, from access to capital to new markets. AI is one thread in a larger effort.
How much money is behind this?
The state put $757,000 in grant dollars into the 2026 round, expected to support $1.18 million in total project investment once matched funds are counted, serving more than 6,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Find your AI Proficiency level
The free 7 Levels assessment places you across seven stages of AI capability. Under ten minutes. Research-backed scoring.