Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network

Building rural assets to build rural livelihoods

The Aspen Institute: Community Strategies Group

On this page:

Introducing Margins to Mainstream

Downloadable steps

Rural Endowment Building


The Road Map

Margins to Mainstream introduces the FES Program Design Road Map. Get your Road Map here.

Thinking and Action Framework:
Margins to Mainstream

Margins to Mainstream—Community Foundations Advancing Family Economic Success was developed for the October 2003 workshop of the same name, sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and co-organized by the Coalition of Community Foundations for Youth (CCFY) and the Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network (RDPLN), was held on October 24-25 in Baltimore, MD.

For half a decade, the Casey Foundation and its partners have been refining a "framework" to enable local leaders to grasp different approaches to helping families and devise strategies that will prove most appropriate to their neighborhoods, communities and cultures. Margins to Mainstream is a tailored version of the Family Economic Success (FES) approach, prepared especially for community foundations—rural, suburban and urban—that seek to advance the economic security of low-income families.

RDP Learning Network members will be familiar with the approach—Margins to Mainstream delves into what community foundations can do to address the "Strengthening Families" topic introduced in Building Rural Livelihood—A Thinking and Action Framework for Designing RDP Program and Grantmaking Efforts. Margins to Mainstream will guide you through four steps meant to help you design more effective program and grantmaking efforts focused on advancing Family Economic Success in your region, using and leveraging your foundation's resources. Each successive step is meant to help your board and staff establish good information and a useful context for making challenging design decisions for your FES effort.

The four steps (and the corresponding downloadable sections of the workbook) are:

  1. Think Family Economic Success: What is Family Economic Success? How would we know Family Economic Success when we see it?
  2. Set out on the FES Program Design Road Map: With that in mind, what do we know at the outset about how our community foundation's motivation, restrictions, rationale, resources and preferences will shape our efforts to advance Family Economic Success where we live?
  3. Do your FES Diagnostic. What specifically do you know about low-income and struggling families in the neighborhoods and communities where you now plan to undertake your FES work? What FES outcomes and indicators are the biggest gaps, represent the most critical issues to address where those families live? Who is doing what in those communities to advance FES?
  4. Complete the FES Program Design Road Map. How, with whom and with which resources will you advance toward your FES destination? How will you measure your progress and act on what you learn so you can travel further faster on your next FES journey?



Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Learning Network
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