Rural Capacity Building: New Funding Gives This Appalachia-Based Ed Nonprofit Room to Grow

Education may be one of the top causes philanthropists support, but the sector as a whole often glosses over rural education despite the obvious need there. A recent study by the Center for Public Education found that while rural youth make up nearly 20% of all public school students in the U.S., students who attend rural schools often have less access to learning opportunities than students in suburban or urban areas.

Rural students face a host of challenges: insufficient funding for their schools, a digital divide, limited access to early care and education programs, teacher shortages, and little to no access to career counseling, mental health services, and some special education services, among others.

In Appalachian Kentucky, one organization has been working to make a difference for 25 years. Partners for Rural Impact (PRI) began as a project of Berea College. Then known as Partners for Rural Education, it focused its efforts on students in its home region, using a cradle to career approach, which supports students not just through their K-12 schooling but from birth (including things like kindergarten readiness) through finding a career.

In 2021, PRI separated from Berea College and launched as a standalone nonprofit, changing its name to Partners for Rural Impact. According to PRI's president and CEO Dreama Gentry, the reason for the split is that the Appalachian work had become too large to remain housed in higher education. "It was a good separation," Gentry said. "I say it was a graduation, not a divorce."

Now, with support from some major funders, PRI is expanding its work to two new rural areas — specifically, the towns of Mexico, Missouri; and Diboll and Pineland in East Texas. Los Angeles Clippers coach Tyronn Lue and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer of the Ballmer Group are providing support for Mexico, Missouri, where Lue grew up. Lue is working with PRI to mobilize $10 million over five years. Lue himself will be providing $2.5 million, with the Ballmer Group providing an additional $2.5 million. The Ballmer Group is also providing general operating support for PRI's expansion.

In East Texas, meanwhile, the T.L.L. Temple Foundation has committed $3 million over the first five years of its partnership with PRI. It’s also working to unlock more funding from private philanthropy in the region and state.

PRI also recently received four separate federal grants totaling $35 million, some of which will support the expansions into Missouri and East Texas. It’s a great example of the popularity of place-based, multisector partnerships in philanthropy today, a strategy PRI has leaned into for some time.

"We think part of what this helps to kind of emphasize and drive home is that when private philanthropy invests in an organization like PRI, we are able to take those flexible dollars and leverage them against and bring in extensive amounts of private and federal funding into these rural communities that likely wouldn't be sought after and obtained otherwise," said Shane Garver, PRI's vice president for strategic impact.

For Gentry, the decision to expand was simple, since PRI had already been doing part of this work outside Appalachia. "When we started to look at the landscape and look at what we were doing… what we realized is we had already been doing and stepping into some of the national policy work. We had already been building capacity in other places," she said.

“It has to be locally led, but we can power it”

Place-based work is a key component of rural philanthropy, and when it comes to pursuing that work in rural communities, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. According to Gentry, one of the biggest hurdles of expanding PRI’s work is leaving behind the strategies it had adopted for the needs of Appalachian Kentucky. Although these had proven successful there, they wouldn’t necessarily work elsewhere.

For place-based partnerships to work, Gentry said, local communities must lead the change. "What we've realized is that it has to be locally led, but we can power it. We can power it by hiring the executive director and by doing the philanthropic piece of it by bringing in federal grants."

PRI has already hired two executive directors to lead the work in the new regions. In addition to working to unlock federal grants, PRI has also partnered with private funders, as mentioned. Clippers coach Tyronn Lue, who grew up in Mexico, Missouri, a town of about 11,500, had been supporting his hometown for years. According to Jenny Goldstock-Wright, CEO of the philanthropic advisory firm Driving Force, Lue has expressed interested in improving life outcomes for the people in town. That includes education outcomes, access to entrepreneurship opportunities, new career paths and creating better transportation. In the interest of expanding his support, Lue invited Clippers owner Steve Ballmer to the town to find ways to help, focusing particularly on younger people.

Ballmer connected Lue with StriveTogether, which then connected him with PRI. Ballmer’s philanthropic vehicle, the Ballmer Group, had already been supporting PRI and is also a major backer of StriveTogether, a national organization that supports place-based education and antipoverty strategies. PRI is a member of the StriveTogether network.

According to Garver, PRI's executive directors work with their communities and a cross section of leaders and other stakeholders to develop a plan for their communities and the kind of benchmarks and results they want to see.

“So what this looks like is that leaders from faith communities, judicial law enforcement, education and others gather around the table, look at local data and say, ‘You know what, what do we hold as aspirations, cradle to career for kiddos in our community?’” Garver said. After six months of listening to the community, PRI launched a cradle-to-career partnership in Mexico, Missouri.

“PRI is bringing capacity. It's bringing a proven model”

As in Missouri, PRI’s work in East Texas draws upon a partnership with a funder that’s been active in the area for a while. According to Wynn Rosser, president and CEO of the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, the partnership with PRI was especially apt because T.L.L. Temple already had cradle-to-career priorities, especially when it came to education and the workforce.

"Our highest priorities in education are early literacy and early numeracy with third grade reading and math scores as our benchmark population level changes there," Rosser said. "And then we're bringing postsecondary experiences [into] the high school in this region, which is something that has been done in other places, but hadn't been done as much here because it's an area where there's been less investment, certainly less philanthropic investment, which is characteristic of most rural places."

The goal, Rosser said, is to help more young East Texans into employment that pays a living wage and is in high demand. In the area, that means jobs in fields like commercial truck driving, medicine, HVAC, electrical, welding and teaching.

"The labor market varies a great deal," Rosser said. "But… there's a real challenge in getting low-income and first-generation college students into and through any form of postsecondary education in Texas." The question for T.L.L. Temple, according to Rosser, is what it can do to ensure that its community supports young people, that they have a way to succeed in their communities, or, if they choose to leave, that they’re set up for success wherever they want to go.

For the foundation, partnering with PRI was important because the region doesn’t have a lot of organizational capacity due to chronic underinvestment. “It’s not that we don’t have bright, dedicated, really smart [educators]. Many of our superintendents have doctorates. They could work anywhere; they choose to work here. But [our school districts] just don’t have the levels of bureaucracy that a larger urban district has,” Rosser said.

"PRI is bringing capacity,” he added. “It's bringing a proven model. It brings a way of working with communities to establish community priorities and shared ownership."

The foundation is awarding a $2 million grant up front over five years with the opportunity to match an additional million over that same five-year period. T.L.L. Temple will also be working alongside PRI to make sure that other funders are aware of the work being done in East Texas.

Catalyzing a better future for rural youth

By building on its success in Appalachian Kentucky and its work in Missouri and East Texas, PRI is looking to catalyze further support for rural students across the U.S. In addition to its policy work, PRI has also formed a rural-to-rural collaborative and is formalizing partnerships, starting with its partners at the Delta Health Alliance, at North State in Northern California, and in New Hampshire, Gentry said. She added that it will be adding more leaders from these new regions.

“We want to see multiple rural places coming together regularly, thinking with federal agencies in D.C., and thinking with each other and with philanthropy,” Gentry said.

But rural places still need help from more funders, including national funders. "No one is… thinking and speaking about rural America as a diverse entity where we need to invest," Gentry said.

"I think there's a role for all philanthropic organizations in rural places," Rosser said. "So national funders certainly have a role. What the place-based funder does is provide that trusted partner [who] is local, who has knowledge and experience and relationships with the community… We need more people who are willing to invest in rural people and rural places."

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