In the world of placed-based funders like community foundations, there clearly appears to be a growing focus and emphasis on increasing our involvement and impact in rural communities and small towns. This recent story highlights two of our current successes in the towns of Marine City and Memphis and also highlights why supporting small town growth may be a challenge for some placed-based funders.

Our Community Foundation has become much more intentional and strategic about our work in rural Michigan, and along the way we’ve continued to adapt our systems and processes so that we can be a true listening and engaged partner. You won’t be surprised to hear me say that building trust – with one local resident or stakeholder at a time if necessary – is likely the most accurate predictor of success. And we don’t take our broad strategic focus areas to our small towns and tell them what we feel is important. We listen and allow them to define, in their own words, what they view as a road map to community development and prosperity. 

This approach is much more hands-on and intensive than the normal competitive grantmaking we all do. It can be an uncomfortable space for some foundations. Many of us are clearly more comfortable operating within the confines of competitive grant programs. It’s a familiar space. We can stay in our offices, download applications, ask questions, and forward on full meeting packets to our board or grantmaking committees.  

Our growing experience in rural communities tells us that this traditional model doesn’t work in rural America for the most impactful projects. We have to go to them. Ask questions. Listen. Solve problems. Support their capacity. Allow our front-line staff to use judgement and discretion in making funding decisions. 

This recent article by Walter Hudson from the EDU Ledger, reveals some helpful survey data for those of us trying to be more intentional about engaging rural communities. Among the findings that Mr. Hudson reports are that “….social connections are the primary driver of rural leadership….”  and that 52% of the respondents don’t even know where to start. And you shouldn’t be surprised to know that Rural America faces a significant funding gap from funding agencies and departments as well as from philanthropy. 

Which leads me back to one of the key pillars of our work — proactive grantmaking. No long, formal applications. No competitive process. No making our small-town stakeholders jump through a series of hoops, documents, financial reports and presentations for the hopeful chance we’ll say yes at our next quarterly meeting. This probably makes some of my community foundation friends nervous. Deploying our capital to make an impact does not at all require an application.

Throughout my long career I’ve noticed the most common denominator for truly impactful projects is that they never started with a grant application. They have always started with a conversation, asking about dreams, visions, and what may be possible. It’s quite easy for program staff to come up with challenges, obstacles, threats and risks. The harder skill set is encouraging dreams and believing in a vision. 

Even our smaller grant programs serving Rural Michigan are often highly proactive with minimal upfront paperwork and documentation. Over the last few weeks as our communities have struggled with food and basic needs, we’ve provided over $100,000 via dozens of grants ranging from just a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. Each decision based on a personal site visit, or phone conversation, or recommendation from a trusted partner, resident or stakeholder who lives in the town. In many instances we’ve turned around the grant check within a couple days and often delivered by hand.

We’re still learning our way in the rural space. Our friends at the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation are truly our strongest friends and collaborators in this space. We’re also learning more by following and implementing the Heart & Soul model. But we already have more momentum and success stories than we imagined we’d have at this point. This philosophy and approach fits so naturally within the culture of our foundation and this part of Michigan’s Thumb Region and we’re excited to see where this leads.