By: Katrina Badger (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and Kelly Donnelly (Heron Foundation)
Introduction
The pride, hope, and resolve of local leaders in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, are profound and inspiring. Pine Bluff is a small town of just over 41,000 people in rural America, sitting on a history of rich cultural depth that local leaders know well, with the majority of the population identifying as Black. Building on their collective need for affordable housing, they organized and partnered to create WE Build, a program to create more affordable, quality homes in their community that make homeownership—a wealth-building tool available to low-income families. As they build the houses and the future they want for their families and community, the investment opportunity is glaring; the same reality is true for scores of rural communities nationwide.
PRT has listened to experts in and of these places and invested in their priorities and assets. Through deep collaboration, RWJF and Heron support PRT to advance rural development that builds on local leadership, empowers communities, and strengthens local economies. We hope others will, too.
Who is PRT?
The Partners for Rural Transformation (PRT) are a coalition of six community organizations working to launch economic development innovations to deploy capital at scale across rural America.
Rural Places: An Under-Recognized Opportunity for Philanthropic Impact
Want to have a transformational impact in our nation’s most marginalized places and actually make a difference in the lives of the people who live there? Rural regions of persistent poverty offer fertile ground, and it’s time for philanthropy to recognize and capitalize on the opportunity. For example, PRT launched a bold and audacious $1B fund to ensure capital flows into rural places facing persistent poverty toward a vision of persistent opportunity in these places. In just five years, the fund has exceeded its goal – to the tune of $2.5B. These funds help the Partners build deeper relationships in communities facing the deepest disinvestment and create lasting impact through direct investment in those places. Through its six Partners, PRT leverages eight private dollars from every public dollar invested, multiplying it for a more significant impact at scale. This helps make almost 30,000 housing units available in rural Appalachia, and similar stories in multitudes of places across our nation’s poorest communities. These fundamental elements of infrastructure, which most of us take for granted, create the foundation for thriving people and communities.
Why Rural?
Rural communities form the backbone of our nation, supplying us with food (90% of agricultural production), energy, natural resources (83% of zero-emission clean energy), and so much more.
A Role for Philanthropy in Rural Development
PRT built on their decades of work, deep relationships and trust, and transformative success in their respective regions of persistent poverty to develop a Rural Funding Guide, which they vetted and evolved with input from on-the-ground rural development practitioners in their regions. The Guide provides a roadmap for how capital should look and move to achieve effective and sustainable rural development. It describes eight practices to ensure that investments are responsive to rural communities’ local priorities and driven by local leadership and solutions.
Eight (8) Practices of Effective Rural Development Investment
- Put Community Voice First
- Build Community Adaptability
- Increase Flexible Funding
- Grow Grant Capital
- Provide Multi-Year Support
- Make Capital Easier to Access
- Support Regional Approaches
- Form Trusted Place-Based Relationships
PRT calls on philanthropy to follow these practices in partnership with local and regional organizations and existing efforts to build and strengthen investment systems that create durable, meaningful impact. We’ve seen this in action when 13.5 acres were secured for affordable housing in Pescadero, California (via RCAC), using public and philanthropic investment together.
Calling for Generative Collaboration Between Philanthropy and Practitioners
No single effort can solve rural communities’ complex challenges, but catalytic action and transformative progress are possible through partnerships between funders and rural development practitioners. The practices above have been pivotal in enhancing the impact of our investments on rural communities.
PRT provides an unmatched opportunity for national funders to, through a single entry-point, be in relationship with a set of regional organizations located in, and serving, the most persistent poverty places in rural America. Farah Ahmad, PRT’s President, reflects that “what sets RWJF’s and Heron’s funding apart is its patient, multi-year operating funds that enabled PRT to grow, adapt, and refine solutions to meet the priorities of the communities they serve. PRT built a trusting relationship with the two funders, learning together on multi-day site visits and engaging in generative dialogue together over time.”
Conclusion
Rural America’s stories are of leaders who rise to meet challenges with courage and visionary collaborations, like the Partners for Rural Transformation, who see the promise of persistent opportunity for future generations. PRT is calling us all to a new standard for philanthropy—centering flexible capital and funding community-led solutions. We must now listen, adapt, and invest in deep partnerships with patience and purpose.