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The Rural Development Industry and the Friends in the Field

The Rural Development Industry and the Friends in the Field. by Benjamin Winchester University of Minnesota, Morris November 19, 2007. Why is this on my radar?. Studying this since 1996 when I began working for CST Who are all these groups?

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The Rural Development Industry and the Friends in the Field

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  1. The Rural Development Industry and the Friends in the Field by Benjamin Winchester University of Minnesota, Morris November 19, 2007

  2. Why is this on my radar? • Studying this since 1996 when I began working for CST • Who are all these groups? • First conceptualized by Winchester/Cantrell, 2003 • Model presented during Symposium – Summit 2006 • “Working better together for the common good”

  3. Ron Anderson, Mayor of Milan • The demise of ‘Rural America’ has created or stimulated an entire industry whose ‘sole purpose’ is to ‘save Rural America’. Jobs, careers, and bureaucracies have been created to address this specific issue; poverty creates wealth and opportunities, not for the ‘rural poor’, but the bureaucracies created to address the problem. Do the designated population benefit or is it the ‘carpetbaggers’, opportunists, and bureaucrats who reap the actual rewards? • The problems of ‘Rural America are compounded by diverse intellectuals, elitists, and self-serving bureaucrats; whose main goal is self-preservation, not the elimination or reduction of the economic problems of rural America.

  4. the Rural Development Industry • Who are these people? • Cantrell & Winchester, 2004 • Totality of non-local private and public organizations dedicated to working in and for rural areas • Let’s examine it like an industry

  5. 1 2

  6. Level 1

  7. Level 2

  8. Think of it as an industry • Products – leadership, economic analysis, agricultural eduction, etc. • Specialized • Based on paradigm of funding unit - RFPs • Price • Is this really based on demand? • Competition (within the industry) • Consumers and Choice • Funding organizations and, ultimately, small towns (perfect information?) • Is there a menu that communities can choose from?

  9. Boundaries and Regions In the United States, there are 3,043 counties – 72% serve less than 50,000 residents. Of the 36,001 sub-county subdivisions, 90% serve less than 10,000 residents. (Charles Fluharty, 2001) The RDI works in this complex web with a complex web of its own…

  10. Friends in the Field mapping exercise. August, 2007

  11. All Together Now! August, 2007

  12. So what? Two levels of analysis Funders & Service Providers Service Providers and Communities Feedback not always shared with funders or other RDI participants RDI related to human service industry Generally cooperative & kind Individually we are but a chapter (or paragraph) in the story of a small town

  13. Organizing the RDI • The RDI cannot just tell communities to work together • Community development is a process – even more complex with the number of overlapping boundaries • Jurisdictional and specialization of RDI work • Inventory of “community capacity” before work begins • We may want one of our partners to implement their program first • Unable to identify individual outcomes – measure collective outcomes when funders demand individual accountability

  14. What Did We Do? • Survey indicates that over half of us will be working with an increasing # of communities • What are we doing to manage this growth? • Survey: “Those in the field need a better understanding of other programs....or they need to be able to refer to a "one stop shop" location of programs.” • If a community is not ready, do we know who to point them to? The smallest towns have the fewest resources

  15. What Can We Do? • For rural Minnesota • a RDI database searchable by zipcode – receive a list of all the agencies that serve their area • For the RDI • Determine “community capacity” model for the social infrastructure • Build a “knowledge base” for the industry to utilize. • Towns, projects, leaders, outcomes • This can also be utilized by small town leaders to see what is happening in other towns • Work better together!

  16. Levels of Collaboration Source: National Network for Collaboration

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