Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network

Building rural assets to build rural livelihoods

The Aspen Institute: Community Strategies Group

On this page:

Preliminary materials

Starting point: The Framework

Getting to know your rural "wealth"

Tactic and strategy break-outs

Rural Endowment Building

There's Wealth in the Boonies

Engines for Building Rural Endowments

Held in January 2003, "There's Wealth in the Boonies" brought together representatives of 36 rural community foundations in 24 states as well as Kenya and South Africa. Over the course of two days, participants heard in-depth case studies and guidance on building and sustaining rural endowments of all kinds—from area funds to donor advised funds, from scholarships to organizational endowments (also known as agency funds).

Whether you attended the workshop and want to retrieve materials you remember, or missed the workshop and want to review the materials presented, the outline and links that follow will let you peruse the events of the two-day session.

Note: Many of the files listed below are in Adobe PDF format. To view these, you'll need Adobe's (free) reader—which is probably already on your computer but which you can otherwise easily get online.


Preliminary Materials


Starting Point: The Framework

Engines for Building Rural Endowment: An RDP Thinking and Action Framework, a draft version of an RDP Thinking and Action Framework on endowment building, offers a toolkit for developing rural endowment building strategies and served as the centerpiece for the workshop. It is designed to help community foundations think through, act on and assess their strategy and tactics for building rural endowment engines that will enhance the economic vitality of rural families and communities.

The draft version was shared at the workshop and a second version will be available in the next few months. Until then, peruse the presentation slides to acquaint yourself with the framework and its uses.


Getting to Know Your Rural "Wealth":
Tools and Rules from the Field

How can community foundations find rural donors? What is "wealth" in rural areas? How do we find out who has the real money in our rural county when no one will talk about it? How can we encourage rural folks to give to endowment? And so on....

The Transfer of Wealth Analysis. Jeff Yost of the Nebraska Community Foundation described NCF's use of national transfer of wealth research. NCF has projected when and how much will transfer in each of Nebraska's 93 counties over the next 50 years.

The Philanthropy Index. Alan McGregor of the Southern Rural Development Initiative offered an overview of The Philanthropy Index for Small Towns and Rural Areas. Developed by the Southern Philanthropy Consortium, it combines "hard" data and a subjective process for measuring a community's charitable giving potential.

Rural Donor Survey. Elizabeth Banwell, former Director of Marketing and Communications for the Maine Community Foundation, described in Identifying & Working with Rural Gatekeepers how donor surveys helped MCF assess and set rural endowment-building goals and strategy.

Identifying and Working with Rural Gatekeepers. Judy Sjostedt of Parkersburg Area Community Foundation in West Virginia shared her methods for finding and engaging the "gatekeepers"—folks who occupy the space between individuals of wealth and the foundation.


Tactic and Strategy Break-Outs

The following break-out sessions, and their accompanying materials, led participants through a range of rural endowment building how-to's (and not-to's).

Low-Touch to High-Touch: Rural Donor Services from Basic to Bodacious—Even more so than in urban areas, rural endowment building success can sink or swim based on how deftly donor relationships are handled. This session offered stories and guidance about how rural-focused foundations handle basic to bodacious rural donor services.

Honoring Rural: Choosing and Using Language, Message and Methods to Market Rural-Focused Endowments—We hear it over and over again—"No one in our rural area knows what an endowment is." In this session, presenters shared an overview on message development for targeted donors and tactics for building endowment acumen in rural areas.

Many Donors, One Fund: Developing Area Funds in Amazing Rural Places—Find out how some very rural communities have managed to build broad-based community endowments using a variety of tactics, including matches, community events, and alumni appeals.

Expanding Your Rural Endowment Pie: Private Foundations, Government and Other Partnerships—We often hear: "If we could only get that private foundation interested in helping us build our rural endowments, it could make a real difference." RDPLN members shared how they leveraged outside resources for rural endowments.

Endowment for What? Using Good Rural Programs to Produce Great Rural Endowments—Good program equals good development—now we can prove it. This session offered rousing stories from community foundations that have effectively utilized rural grantmaking and program efforts to spark and spur rural endowment building.

Doom or Vrooooom? Turning Rural Agency, Field of Interest, Advised and Scholarship Funds into Endowment Engines—How do we efficiently service our scholarship funds? How do we make a rural field of interest fund grow beyond its first major donor? Should we promote agency funds or not? Presenters shared how rural community foundations organize themselves to grow endowed funds.



Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Learning Network
The Aspen Institute
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