MONROE — The authors of the new book “Pulling Together — A Handbook for Community Change” are pleased to announce the fall tour of Wisconsin by Jeff Yost of the Nebraska Community Foundation (NCF).

After a lifetime of working to make communities better places to live, co-authors Mike Breininger and Tom Mosgaller teamed up to write a book to help aspiring community members make change happen. The book, “Pulling Together: A Handbook for Community Change”, released in 2025, is a lifetime of experiences and successes with a few failures mixed in, bringing about positive change in communities.  

Breininger is a small-town conservative evangelical pastor from Richland Center. Mosgaller, a self-described progressive community builder and farmer, lives in Verona. These two have collaborated for more than a decade. Their shared vision for stronger communities transcends ideological divides and emphasizes the power of love, trust, and relationships as the antidote to polarization.

Pulling Together has real-life stories of how communities were changed by practical and passionate people who worked together to make positive things happen. Sprinkled among the stories are lessons learned and actions that can help people with good ideas transform those ideas into results in their communities. 

One of the stories in the book is the amazing revitalization of Red Cloud, Nebraska, Jeff Yost’s hometown. Red Cloud went from being a small, struggling rural community with a declining population to a vibrant, hopeful example of what happens when you Pull Together.

Yost is the president and CEO of the Nebraska Community Foundation, a network of over 270 communities across Nebraska that has become an internationally recognized example of what happens when economic, social, and philanthropic leaders work together. Jeff and the authors of Pulling Together will be sharing the tools and stories in a “Pulling Together Wisconsin” tour October 8-17.

“The Nebraska Community Foundation story has become a national model for excellence, demonstrating how local communities can work together to learn and lead to a better future while at the same time maintaining their local independence as hometowns, bottom up, locally led, and build on the belief that we each do better when we all do better,” said Mosgaller. 

“The story of the Nebraska Community Foundation is an excellent example of Pulling Together, bottom-up, community-led, and asset-based,” Mosgaller explains. “The community sessions we are planning will stimulate the imagination of Wisconsinites to the power of what can be done when philanthropy, economic development, and community builders work together.”

This event is being brought to Green County by Green County Development Corporation, the Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin, and UW Extension Green County.

To learn more about Pulling Together, go to pulling-together.com. 

For questions, email gcdc@greencountydevelopment.com or call 608-328-9452.