The key question:
How can community foundations use grantmaking and program activities to enhance the economic security of low-income rural families and communities?
Don't miss:
Building Rural Livelihood: A Thinking and Action Framework—a study of how community foundations can design effective grantmaking and program efforts to help build the economic vitality of their communities.
Margins to Mainstream: Community Foundations Advancing Family Economic Success—a roadmap of decision points in your work to improve the economic success of families in your service area.
Overview
The current rural funding climate requires community foundations to make difficult choices to determine the best, most sustainable role to play in rural CED efforts. Thus, as community foundations experiment with ways of building strong rural communities and influencing the economic well-being of rural families, it is critically important to share and learn from program and capacity-building strategies, pitfalls and achievements of others—to move the field toward greater effectiveness and impact.
Related resources
- Thinking/Action Framework—Building Rural Livelihood: A Thinking and Action Framework for Designing RDP Program and Grantmaking Efforts is a framework for how community foundations can design effective grantmaking and program initiatives to help build the economic vitality of rural families and communities. Based on RDP experience since 1993, the guts of this framework is the RDP Program Design Circle, and its eight questions.
- The RDP Program Design Circle details eight questions to ask yourself—and answer, of course—to design an RDP program or grantmaking effort. If you answer all of these, design and deliver your program, and then reflect on your progress and answer them again as you design your next phase of RDP effort, we think you will regularly improve your impact over time.
- The Six Whats is a look at the kind of strategy choices that must be made as you plan your work to improve the economic security of your rural people and areas.
- FES Thinking/Action Framework—Margins to Mainstream: Community Foundations Advancing Family Economic Success takes the thinking in Building Rural Livelihood and focuses it on the Annie E. Casey's Foundation's construct of Family Economic Success. The Framework details a roadmap of decision points in your work to improve the economic success of families in your service area.
- Workshops on rural grantmaking and program activities—Notices of upcoming events and "workshop in a webpage" archives of past workshops.
- Other resources—Presentations, articles, and other materials on rural grantmaking and program activities.