Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network

Building rural assets to build rural livelihoods

The Aspen Institute: Community Strategies Group

On this page:

Preliminary materials

"Owning Up: Moving Poor Families from Margins to Mainstream"/a>

"The FES Journey to Date"

"Earn It, Keep It, Grow It"

"Heading toward the "Earn It" Outcome"

"Heading toward the "Keep It" Outcome"

"Heading toward the "Grow It" Outcome"

"Taking It All Back Home"

Rural Grantmaking & Program Activities

Margins to Mainstream

Community Foundations Advancing Family Economic Success

An October 2003 peer exchange workshop for both urban and rural community foundations sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Coalition of Community Foundations for Youth (CCFY) and the RDP Learning Network. Margins to Mainstream explored the three strands of Family Economic Success—Family Economic Supports, Workforce Development and Community Investment—and the ways both urban and rural community foundations can help achieve positive outcomes for families and children.

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


Owning Up: Moving Poor Families from the Margins to the Mainstream

More than a decade ago, Michael Sherraden of the Center for Social Development at Washington University charted a new direction for public and private anti-poverty policy when he wrote Assets and the Poor: Toward a New American Welfare Policy. In this groundbreaking work, Sherraden exposed the perverse public policies that punish the poor who try to get ahead while subsidizing middle- and upper-income classes as they acquire more wealth. He also proposed a new mechanism that could help everyone move toward building assets: Individual Development Accounts. In this session, Sherraden discussed why, as we walk with families who are trying to achieve economic success, we must head toward the destination of building their assets.


The FES Journey to Date

A review of the genesis and evolution of the Annie E. Casey Foundation's work advancing a Family Economic Success agenda across the nation.


Earn it, Keep It, Grow It

Thinking and Action Framework for Family Economic Success—An introduction to the Margins to Mainstream Thinking and Action Framework by Janet Topolsky, Associate Director, Community Strategies Group, The Aspen Institute.


Heading toward the “Earn It” Outcome

A focus on the “Earn It” outcome: Working families can earn a living that allows them to survive and thrive in the community. This outcome means that a family's working members can find a job that pays a family-sustaining wage, maintain it, and advance their careers and wages over time within their community or region.

Story Time

Tool Time


Heading toward the “Keep It” Outcome

Next, the “Keep It” outcome: Working families can access a full range of financial services and programs that help them protect their income and lower their cost of living in the community and region. This means that a family has a mainstream banking relationship, a good and improving credit record, and is taking advantage of all the tax benefits and public and private programs that will help them protect their income, save for the future and lower their cost of living in the community or region.

Story Time

Tool Time


Heading toward the “Grow It” Outcome

And finally, the “Grow It” outcome: Working families and their communities are accumulating and maintaining assets that are gaining value over time. This means that family members are saving, advancing their education, purchasing homes and any assets they need to keep their job or run their own business; they are maintaining them; that the value of those assets in the community is increasing over time; and that the community's institutions and stakeholders are working together to support low-income families.

Story Time

Tool Time