Roots Revealed Report Launch Event: Discussion & Strategy Space
Thursday, March 20th 2-3pm ET
Please note this event is for a funder-only audience and registrations will be reviewed accordingly. We will be capping registration for this event at 40 so please register promptly to secure a spot!
We are delighted to announce the launch of our report, Roots Revealed: Spotlighting Rural Grassroots Models of Work that are Critical to a Multiracial Democratic Future.
In the months leading up to the 2024 election, the Integrated Rural Strategies Group set out to create a resource that would - regardless of the election’s outcomes - serve as a guide and framework for action for philanthropy. We knew that rural communities — if they were lucky — were poised in 2024 to withstand the boom and bust of philanthropy’s election cycle-driven infusion of resources, and then be left to hold their communities after the dust had settled and the grant cycles expired.
Toward an alternative paradigm, we created this resource to orient funders around the who, what, where, and how rural communities build power to affect real and durable change.
This report’s purpose and thesis could not be more timely; rural communities - including immigrants, Indigenous people, LGBTQIA+ people, workers, farmers, and frontline climate communities - are already facing fallout from freezes to federal funding and increased targeting of rural immigrant populations.
As David Callahn, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Inside Philanthropy asserted in a March 8th email, “While investing in state and local power building will require some grantmakers to go beyond their comfort zones, this is among the few clear leverage points that philanthropy has right now, beyond litigation.”
Roots Revealed is a framework, call to action, and resource for collective coordination that does just that.
On Thursday, March 20th, we invite funders to join us for a strategy space where we will present the framework from Roots Revealed and engage in a discussion around:
- Understanding the humanity of rural communities and their worthiness in being resourced outside of their relationship to elections or other strategic paradigms;
- Learning what building power in rural communities looks like, and be able to seek out, identify, and perhaps even be a part of seeding rural power building where you fund; and
- Shifting your grantmaking’s relationship to “winning” several layers deeper than a successful policy campaign or single-issue advance, to a sense of “winning” that begins at the roots.
This conversation will be led by:
- Lindsay Ryder (she/her), Director, Integrated Rural Strategies Group
- Biz Ghormley (she/they), Consultant & Lead Author
- Michael Chameides, (he/him), Communications and Policy Director, Rural Democracy Initiative
Event Details
When
Mar 20, 2025
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm ET
Where
Virtual
Posted 03/11/2025 in