Rural America plays a critical role in shaping our shared future.
Across the country, national, regional and local organizations—including yours—are working to strengthen rural communities and advance policies that enable long-term prosperity. This survey is part of a project designed to map and analyze the current rural development “systems change” ecosystem.
This includes understanding key capacities such as policy, advocacy, networks and narrative change. Using this analysis, the Strong Foundations for Rural Advancement project will produce two key deliverables:
- A field map and accompanying SWOT analysis of the rural economic development ecosystem as it exists today, along with a vision for what a healthier and stronger ecosystem could look like
- A roadmap for moving from the current state to a future, desired state, including concrete fundable projects that enable this vision.
Your responses will directly inform both deliverables. Please be candid as you respond and consider what is missing, what creates barriers, or what is needed to enable meaningful systems change. This may include generating support for strong policy ideas, improving coordination, or building new capacities across the ecosystem.
This project is not about defining specific policies or identifying individual solutions. Instead, it focuses on understanding how we must collectively work differently and build new capabilities so the rural development ecosystem is more nimble, coordinated and effective in creating lasting change for rural people and places.