the rural development industry and the friends in the field
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Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
The Rural Development Industry and the
Friends in the Field
byBenjamin Winchester
University of Minnesota, Morris
November 19, 2007
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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”
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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.
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Small Towns
Service Providers
Funding Sources1
2
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Level 1
Funders
Service Providers
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Level 2
Service Providers
Recipients
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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?
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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…
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Friends in the Field mapping exercise.
August, 2007
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
All Together Now!
August, 2007
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
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!
Benjamin Winchester Center for Small Towns
Levels of Collaboration
Source: National Network for Collaboration
Level Description
None No working relationship
Networking Communication and understanding
Cooperation
Match needs and efforts to avoid overlap
Coordination
Share resources to address common issues or create something new
Coalition Share ideas, leadership, and resources over time
Collaboration
Build a program together to accomplish a shared vision and outcomes
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