Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rurality, Resilience, & Identity: A Soft Systems Methodology Approach To Understanding Self-Reported Issues In Rural America, Kayla M. Gabehart, Allegra H. Fullerton, Kristin Olofsson

Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy

This study investigates how rural communities In Oklahoma conceive of their socioeconomic position in larger systems, as well as their resiliency and ability to withstand challenges. Utilizing systems thinking and polycentricity literature, we analyze interviews to construct an understanding of how rural communities perceive themselves, and how this impacts interactions with other communities and governments. Rural communities and their associated challenges are complex and impacted by a range of factors. We find that rural residents also feel this complexity, and understand their issues as products of overlapping systems and structures, and both internal and external factors. Additionally, we observe little …

Community Building As A Philosophy, Not An Initiative, Anne C. Kubisch, Kasi Allen, Max Gimbel

The Foundation Review

What happens when a foundation invests in community building for the long haul? The Ford Family Foundation, a rural embedded funder in southern Oregon, has made that transition over the past decade. The result is a transformed organization with a 10-year strategic plan focused on helping rural communities build the futures that they want to see — places where children and families can thrive.

The foundation is pursuing community building not as a stand-alone strategy or “initiative,” but as a philosophy that guides local community development efforts based on capacity building and grantmaking based on partnerships. The shift to a …

The Transformative Power Of The 2030 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, Anna Wasescha, Christa Otteson, Sarah Casey

The Foundation Review

West Central Initiative, a mostly rural community foundation and regional development organization in Minnesota, integrated the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals into its strategic plan in 2019. This article explores how aligning the U.N. goals with the foundation’s “nested strategy” of local, regional, and global goals has aligned and energized the disparate functions of the organization.

This article describes the strategic planning process that led to adoption of the goals, articulates how they have helped evolve the interplay of economic development and philanthropy, and identifies lessons learned from the first two years of working with the goals.

Focusing on …

Scaling Rural Access: One Foundation’S Partnership To Expand Fafsa Completion Across Mississippi, B. Tait Kellogg, Ann Hendrick, Kierstan Dufour, Patricia Steele

The Foundation Review

This article highlights Get2College, a program by the Woodward Hines Education Foundation that provide financial aid counseling to Mississippi high school students, and outlines a study that assessed efforts to scale the FAFSA completion initiative to increase the number of students statewide who complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).

Get2College’s approach to scaling involved a partnership with the state’s rurally based community colleges and leveraged their established support networks to expand its outreach to the state’s often underserved students and increase FAFSA completion rates among that population.

In rural states like Mississippi, underresourced groups are sometimes left …

Partnering For Postsecondary Success In Rural Texas, Allison Pennington

The Foundation Review

Although students living in rural areas perform academically on par with their peers, they are less likely to complete a postsecondary credential due to geographic, economic, and other barriers. Greater Texas Foundation, a private grantmaker focused on postsecondary student success in Texas, fosters rural collaborations as part of its philanthropic strategy.

This article reflects on lessons learned by foundation staff from this strand of work. It describes innovative models for postsecondary support developed by the foundation’s rural partners, discusses the need to balance direct program support and capacity building, and emphasizes the importance of visiting rural communities in person.

To …

Examining How Rural Ecological Contexts Influence Children's Early Learning Opportunities, Iheoma U. Iruka, Mark Dekraai, Janell Walther, Susan M. Sheridan, Tarik Abdel-Monem

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

According to Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000), children’s early development and learning are influenced by multiple systems, including the microsystem (e.g., family poverty level), mesosystem (e.g., home-school partnership), exosystem (e.g., community type, early education policies), and macrosystem (e.g., rural culture). Given the lack of early education studies focused on rural communities, we sought to explore how these ecological systems are linked to children’s early learning experiences, with a particular focus on educators’ perceptions of how these ecosystems influence children’s learning environments and opportunities. Based on interviews and focus groups with school leaders, educators, and parents in 10 rural …

Moving Upstream: An Intersectoral Collaboration To Build Sustainable Planning Capacity In Rural And Appalachian Communities, Laura Milazzo, Holly Raffle, Matthew Courser

The Foundation Review

As part of an effort to address health inequities in Appalachian and rural Ohio, the state’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services developed an upstream intersectoral health innovation that specifically addressed the lack of infrastructure and other capacity issues that create barriers to obtaining federally funded prevention services among communities with the highest need for those services.

The department partnered with two nonprofit organizations and a university to create a performance-based, stepping-stone investment strategy that provided monetary awards to community organizations and included intensive, customized training and technical assistance that promoted capacity- building for data-driven strategic planning.

This article …

By Us And For Us: A Story Of Early Childhood Development Systems Change And Results In A Rural Context, Lisa Payne Simon, Kirsten Scobie, Phoebe Backler, Catherine Mcdowell, Charles Cotton, Susan Cloutier, Clare Nolan

The Foundation Review

Since 2007, the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund — a donor-advised fund of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation — has invested in early childhood development in Coös County — New Hampshire’s largest and most rural and economically disadvantaged county. Community providers from a range of disciplines formed strong professional relationships and agreed on common goals and evidence-based strategies to improve services for children and families.

This article describes how local community members joined forces with the fund to create an integrated early childhood development system for Coös’ children and families. It provides background on the investment and initiative strategy, summarizes …

Child Abuse Prevention In Rural Southern California: A Participatory Action Research Project, Nelly Zambrano

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research project examines resources and services to prevent families and children from entering the child welfare system in a rural town in Southern California. There is constant struggle to get the adequate services, resources and trained staff in this rural area because it is isolated and it takes about two hours’ travel time to get to the metropolitan cities. The literature review discusses child welfare services challenges, strengths and social capital to support families and children as well as the child welfare system itself in rural areas. Constructivism is the appropriate framework for this research project, because the goal …

Multiple Roles Of A Rural Administrator, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Basic administrative procedures are similar in rural and urban areas. Even so, rural human service administrators are often not prepared for the many roles they must assume in small and underfunded rural agencies. The roles may include personnel director, budget officer, accountant, fundraiser, supervisor, building and maintenance supervisor, volunteer coordinator, group developer, community organizer, public educator, policy analyst, and director of public relations and marketing.

The Impact Of Rural Nebraska Industrial Development On The Migration Of Rural Youth, Armin K. Ludwig, Gene M. Hanlon, David R. Dimartino

Publications

For more than a century Americans have migrated from the rural communities in which they were raised, but by 1970 this process had begun to change. Nebraska, however, has not reflected this change, and Nebraskans have continued to leave non-metropolitan areas in large numbers. By 1976 the State stood alone among seven central and southern plains states in having non-metropolitan population losses (Miller, 1978).