Building stronger rural communities through economic development

Members of our Community Economic Development team share insights on how small businesses and economic development contribute to strong rural communities

Each May, National Small Business Week and Economic Development Week shine a spotlight on the people, partnerships and ideas that power local economies. National Small Business Week, led by the U.S. Small Business Administration, recognizes the critical role entrepreneurs and small businesses play in driving innovation, job creation and community vitality. And Economic Development Week highlights the broader systems, strategies and collaborations that help communities grow stronger and more resilient over time.

Together, these weeks provide a natural platform to reflect on and elevate The Ford Family Foundation’s commitment to community economic development, specifically in rural communities, where supporting local businesses and strengthening the conditions for long-term growth also helps create the foundation for children and families to thrive.

We spent some time with Rozalyn Mock, program officer, and Carrie Pipinich, senior program officer, from our Community Economic Development team to learn more about the work.

Senior program officer, Carrie Pipinich, leads the strategic grantmaking that strengthens support systems for rural entrepreneurship and works collaboratively to develop strategy that enhances access to community economic opportunity across rural Oregon and in Siskiyou County.

Program officer, Rozalyn Mock, leads the strategic grantmaking that supports strengthening and growing rural Oregon and Siskiyou County’s economic development ecosystems with an emphasis on increasing the ability of statewide systems to support family economic success.

What is the significance of recognizing National Small Business Week and Economic Development Week at the same time?

Carrie: In rural communities, small businesses are really the foundation of our economies. The fact that these weeks overlap is an important recognition of the incredible contributions of small business owners to the success of a community and its access to economic opportunity.

Rozalyn: I agree. It’s exciting to see National Small Business Week and Economic Development Week happen at the same time because they’re so interconnected: economic developers help small businesses and entrepreneurs start and grow by bringing people together, connecting cross-sector networks, and strengthening the systems that support a thriving local economy, so having these weeks overlap helps tell a fuller story about why small businesses matter, why economic development matters, and the essential role small businesses and entrepreneurs play in shaping strong rural communities.

International Economic Development Council is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. What is one way you have seen that economic development initiatives have evolved since you have been working in this field?

Carrie: Economic development used to focus mostly on business incentives and attracting outside companies to invest in a community, but over the past few decades it’s evolved to also prioritize growing local businesses and building the supports and systems people need to start and scale their own ideas. Today the field is really built on the recognition that all of our communities have assets, talent, and great ideas to grow.

Rozalyn: This evolution has led the field to define community economic development. In addition to traditional economic development, community economic development offers another way to do this work, empowering residents to build on existing community assets, taking a bottom-up approach focused on growing local wealth, increasing access to capital, and collaborating. This results in the private sector, public sector and local residents all having a voice and a seat at the table.

National Small Business Week celebrates small businesses’ ingenuity and contributions to the economy. Can you share an example of how you’ve seen this in action?

Carrie: Our Growing Rural Oregon (GRO) work focuses on helping communities to build support systems that can meet small businesses’ needs as they’re identified in different stages, and those communities work really closely with the entrepreneurs. They’re the ones that are identifying what kind of programming is needed and how to address those gaps in the system they’re finding.

It’s been really cool to see how the collaboration between those two—the supporting entities and the entrepreneurs—has led to both innovative programming and some innovative solutions. The Foundation was able to provide some support to the GRO communities to do technical assistance work with their businesses, and it was fun to see how each small business hired another small business in their community for a service, Keeping those dollars intentionally circulating within their community.

Every year we do a gathering with all of our GRO communities. Last year in Klamath Falls, we had the opportunity to hear from diverse small businesses all deeply rooted in their community. We had everything from a legacy print shop to a record store owner who helps organize comedy shows—just the incredible diversity of folks that get into this small business arena, and all really committed to their place and engaging with their community.

“Focusing on the things that make communities a good place for businesses to grow are the same things that make them a good place for families to thrive.”

The Ford Family Foundation’s mission is to ensure happy, healthy lives for rural kids. How does economic development contribute to that mission?

Rozalyn: I see community economic development as core to our mission because it creates the conditions that are needed for families and kids to thrive. When families have financial stability, communities can make meaningful progress on systemic challenges such as access to housing, healthcare, childcare and upward economic mobility.

Carrie: Focusing on the things that make communities a good place for businesses to grow are the same things that make them a good place for families to thrive. The kind of culture in a community that creates space for entrepreneurship celebrates the incredible creativity and bright ideas that our kids and their parents can have in community.

The recognition of Economic Development Week includes an emphasis on collaboration and partnership. How critical is partnership to this work, especially as it relates to rural communities?

Rozalyn: Partnership is critical to both economic development and supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs. One example that demonstrates this is the work Economic Development for Central Oregon is doing in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties and the surrounding communities.

They created a regional economic development plan that identified the priorities and goals for those three counties. Then they took a hub-and-spoke approach where they made sub-economic development strategies for the surrounding communities, such as La Pine, Prineville, Madras and Sisters that allowed for a tailored approach in each. They also did this work in Bend and Redmond, which made the reciprocal economic development relationship between urban and rural communities more visible.

They leveraged the surrounding rural communities’ existing assets and tied those to the broader regional plan. Through this process, they brought together city managers, county government, residents and local businesses to create a cohesive vision for the region, which would not have been possible without trust and partnerships.

Carrie: We’ve seen really clearly from our work that those strong partnerships — both the formal ones that you develop through things like grant agreements and memorandums of understanding and the partnerships that you build from having a cup of coffee after the meeting– are the foundation for all of the other areas of work that are in that economic development umbrella now.

These partnerships impact everything from supporting community through disaster recovery to addressing the childcare needs in a place to helping small businesses identify the kind of talent they need in their workforce grow moving forward. Nothing would get done without the partnerships.

You describe economic development planning as starting with community building—can you share a story or example of what that actually looks like on the ground?

Carrie: The name of our department within the Foundation is Community Economic Development because it is so critical to the success of economic development at each stage, beginning with the planning.

Rozalyn: I agree. One example of a community that laid the foundation for economic development planning by focusing on community building is A Greater Applegate (AGA). A Greater Applegate is an unincorporated area spanning two counties, Jackson and Josephine, so there are no incorporated communities and no one primary local government to engage with. They began by coming together to create a vision for their community, which required extensive outreach, one-on-one conversations and other community gatherings. Through this community-building process, they built trust and created a vision for what A Greater Applegate would be over the next several years, which was critical to the community’s readiness to take the next step toward economic development planning.