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Before beginning to work with prospective donors, staff and board members (at least those who will be working with donors) should have a shared understanding of a few key community foundation terms.
Thinking and Action Framework:
Engines for Building Rural Endowments
Building Engines for Rural Endowments—A Thinking and Action Framework is a guide to help people who lead community foundations think about and act strategically to build more and better permanently endowed assets focused on vitalizing and sustaining rural areas, rural issues, and rural populations. It is not an exact blueprint, nor is it a roadmap to, as an RDP consultant said recently, a "magic fundraising spigot." Unfortunately, there are no magic spigots. Following the advice and tools offered by the framework, however, will offer what some of the most experienced thinkers in community philanthropy have learned about building engines for rural endowments.
The Framework is portioned out below into bite-size Steps (although some bites are bigger than others). Instead of using the link in the preceding paragraph to download the entire pdf, you can download each Step individually:
- A Framework overview and orientation. This powerpoint presentation offers a brief overview of the Thinking and Action Framework. It might be useful when introducing the process to an endowment-building committee or board of directors.
- Step 0—Orientation. This will orient the new, remind the jaded, or bolster the true-believing community foundation leaders about why we do this work, why community foundations and endowment are important to rural communities, and how to parse the fundamental language of rural endowment building.
Step 1—Know yourself. Ahem. How can you start—or continue—without examining your community foundation?s capacity, and what you learned from building the rural endowment you?ve managed so far? Do that here.- Step 2—Know your environment. What are the giving trends and giving potential in and for your rural areas? How does the local-to-global economy affect the rural endowment-building climate? What emanates from the culture and character of your rural areas that?s important to choosing your rural endowment-building approach?
- Step 3—Set your position and goal. Rubber approaches road. Do you know what existing and potential rural donors think you do? Can you envision what you want them to think? Okay, set your rural endowment-building goal(s) with that (and what you learned from Steps 1 and 2) in mind.
- Step 4—Choose your tactics. For years we?ve been looking. We?ve found 14 basic tactics that community foundations use—alone or in combination—to build rural endowment from varying types of rural donors. Find them here, with some illumination about what each takes. Shine that light on your situation: Which tactics will help you reach your rural endowment-building goal?
- Step 5—Gauge your capacities. Reality check. Have you got what it takes to implement your tactics to meet your goal? Know before you go.
- Step 6—And so what? Yes, well, did your effort make any difference? What really worked? What didn?t? What have you learned to apply your next foray at goal setting? Proceed to amending Step 1? and so forth.
Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Learning Network
The Aspen Institute
One Dupont Circle NW
Suite 700Washington DC 20036
Ph. 202.736.5804Fx. 202.293.0525
rdpinfo@aspencsg.orgwww.aspencsg.org/rdp