Core Services

Since 1993, the Community Strategies Group (CSG) has managed the Network, designed and delivered its action-focused peer-learning events, and collected and disseminated RDP tools, stories and lessons to the community foundation and community development fields.

RDP core services are initiated and maintained through a range of grant and project support from private foundations, individual community foundations, regional associations of grantmakers, and regional or national nonprofit partners. The Ford Foundation supported the early learning and formation of the RDP Learning Network.

The Community Strategies Group is always looking for opportunities to partner with foundations and other organizations to sustain, expand and enhance RDP services.

Since its inception, the Learning Network has engaged some 200 community foundations in RDP through a variety of services, organized into four distinct but interrelated categories:

RDP Learning Clusters

In Learning Clusters, we convene board-staff teams from several foundations multiple times over at least a one-year period for intensive four-day Peer-Learning Institutes. During these Cluster Institutes, the teams advise each other and develop Learning for Action Plans focused on improving specific RDP outcomes targeted by each participating foundation. More than 20 community foundations have participated in this process since 1993. More often than not, they describe their Learning Cluster impact as transformative.

RDP Peer-Exchange Workshops

Peer-Exchange Workshops gather 50-75 community foundation leaders and rural practitioners to "go deep" on a single RDP topic that members have identified as a particular challenge. The two-day workshops are typically organized around a Thinking and Action Framework. They always include an overview, case stories from peers, small-group break-out sessions on strategies, tools and implementation issues, and a peer advice and action planning session for every participating organization. For agendas and materials from past workshops, see the workshop sections under each RDP topic in the menu at the top of this page.

RDP Special Services

We customize our peer-learning methods and RDP lessons, tools, and Thinking and Action Frameworks to provide one-on-one assistance to individual community foundations, regional associations, or ad hoc or formal groupings or alliances of philanthropic and community organizations. We develop these special services on a case-by-case, fee-for-service basis, when a project will contribute to critical RDP learning, and when our assistance can leverage or partner with other resources.

RDP Publications & Learning Resources

We develop written materials, tools and other resources and referrals for the RDP field, based on learning from RDP activities and our original research. As part of our mission to further RDP practice and knowledge, we attempt to make our entire learning and resource archive accessible through this website. This includes the RDP Thinking and Action Frameworks, case stories, presentations and tools developed for all RDP workshops; any original RDP field surveys and research; ideas and news in the online newsletter Open Field (previously called Zest), and a referral system for RDP technical assistance providers. Some RDP publications are also available in print. For more information, see the listings under RDP Resources in the menu at the top of this page.

Building rural assets to build rural livelihoods

On this page:

Core Services

RDP Learning Clusters

RDP Peer-Exchange Workshops

RDP Special Services

RDP Publications & Learning Resources