“Rural communities need good leaders, because rural communities are a vast part of our country. They make up geographically much more of the country than do urban communities. So without leadership, that could create a really big problem.” – Robin Wolff, Senior Program Director, Rural Housing, Enterprise Community Partners
What Funders Can Do
Support rural leaders guiding local change.
Seek and compensate for rural expertise. Hire rural staff, look to rural advisors, and appoint rural board members.
Develop funding and research agendas that are informed by rural people, challenges, and opportunities.
Fund peer learning across geography, issues, and ideology. By sharing how to overcome shared challenges, we can strengthen rural communities faster.
Ensure equity in rural areas.
Create and support opportunities for rural leaders and leadership development practitioners to engage in cross-disciplinary peer learning centered around equity.
Support the existing rural leadership development efforts that center equity. Share Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion resources with rural leadership development efforts that have less experience in this work.
Fund data collection, implementation, and evaluation to advance equitable policies and practices that can advance rural well being.
Make the right investments in rural America.
Earmark 20 percent of all funding for rural leadership development work. This is a way for groups of leaders to implement theories of change, activate a community, and see sustained results.
Recognize that the most challenging issues faced by the nation and across many Indigenous nations are in rural areas as well, but that rural communities are severely underserved by federal dollars and national philanthropies. Adopt an agenda that will close the equity gap in rural areas.
Create partnerships that help bridge issue-specific funding (e.g. health, education, development work) with more general-purpose rural funding (typically from local family foundations and rural funding collaboratives).
Use Rural Development Hubs as intermediaries to meet the true needs and strengths of rural communities.
What Rural Leadership Development Practitioners Can Do
Develop rural leadership to guide local change.
Build capacity by flipping the script on rural leadership. It’s less about the typical notions of leadership that evoke individual power, wealth, or position. Recognize and nurture groups of people dedicated to community betterment.
Embrace a “youth-led, elder-guided” approach to community-based work. It’s important to mentor and nurture young community members and create a ladder to leadership. Plan for transitions so programs or initiatives don’t fade when a leader steps down.
Rural leadership is hard work, and it can be isolating. Shift to a communal model of leadership, where responsibilities are shared and impact can be amplified. Also consider connecting to support programs or peers in other communities. It helps to have a network to share ideas, find common solutions, and to be there for one another.
Center equity in rural leadership development.
Adopt an asset-based approach to rural leadership development work. There is untapped talent and interest everywhere.
Prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in all your work. Intentionally and whole-heartedly including those who have been traditionally excluded helps the whole community in countless ways.
Highlight the diversity of people in communities and humanize them as neighbors and friends. Reject any narratives that wrongly portrays rural diversity, further divide communities, or pit people against one another.
Create programs and efforts that explicitly serve people who have been discriminated against. Equity is an act of fairness.
Attract investments in rural communities.
Uplift rural success stories. Inspire wide-scale change by showing what success looks like.
Develop relationships and be transparent with local, tribal, and state policymakers and news media. Communicate the challenges and opportunities your community faces. Share stories and ideas about the investments needed in your area.
Forge partnerships with rural development hubs and other allies working in your sector in other rural communities (or from other sectors within your community).