Ford Institute Leadership Program

RDI has been helping cultivate a bountiful network of rural leaders for nearly 20 years.
RDI was started in 1989 and was then known as the Community Initiatives Program, part of the Oregon Economic Development Department. The drastic downturn in the timber industry resulted in the loss of hundreds of high wage jobs in many rural communities. The Community Initiatives Program was started to help these communities diversify their economies. RDI started by facilitating a Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis in each community, formed a diverse group of citizens representing the community, and facilitated a vision and strategic action plan. These plans detailed steps needed to build on local assets to create new job opportunities, develop community infrastructure, strengthen the workforce and lifelong learning, and implement projects to improve the community quality of life.

RDI quickly learned that there was very little or no local staff available to spearhead implementation of these plans. If the communities were going to be successful, the local volunteers needed to work together. And to be successful in implementing these plans, leadership training was and still is the key to teaching volunteers how to work together, build consensus, and implement these projects to create community vitality.

Training rural leaders is the key to building rural community capacity and creating community vitality.
In 1991 the state legislature passed Senate Bill 713 transforming the Community Initiatives Program into the private non-profit, Rural Development Initiatives (RDI). One of the first tasks RDI took on was to develop the Rural Futures Forum, our leadership training program for community members. The inaugural class started in 1992 and graduated 30 leaders from 12 communities in the spring of 1993. The training was incredibly successful in moving the strategic plans from these 12 communities into action. And with this new network, communities learned from and mentored each other as they shared their successes in revitalizing their downtowns, growing local entrepreneurial businesses, building parks, developing infrastructure, and celebrating success.

Over the next ten years, RDI trained nearly 500 leaders thanks to the generous support of state and corporate funders. Then with challenges in the state economy in 2001 and 2002, the state could no longer afford to fund the program. RDI believed in the power of building rural communities through leadership training and started searching for a partner to develop a new program that would take what was learned from the Rural Futures Forum to build a larger, more comprehensive leadership program.

In came The Ford Family Foundation with their newly established Ford Institute for Community Building program and a commitment to rural Oregon and Siskiyou County in California. The Institute believed in the value of training rural leaders and contracted with a team lead by Vicki Luther and Heartland Center, and included Peter Hille, Brushy Fork Institute, and Lynn Youngbar, RDI’s past and founding Executive Director.

A meaningful partnership was created between The Ford Family Foundation and RDI. Together, The Ford Family Foundation and RDI built this program that now includes a five-year process in each community with other partners. It begins with the first leadership class, then effective organizations training, followed by a second leadership class taught by RDI and community ambassadors (graduates from the first class that volunteer their time), a community collaborations training and then a third leadership class where community ambassadors (former class members) run the class with very little assistance from RDI.

In the eight years since the Ford Institute Leadership Program was started, The Ford Family Foundation and RDI have worked with 61 community hubs and have more than 4,000 graduates. And thanks to the work of OSU and other evaluators, we finally have the data to prove what RDI has known since 1992, training rural leaders is the key to building rural community capacity and creating community vitality.

RDI can bring the award-winning Ford Institute Leadership Program curriculum to your community. The Leadership program training consists of 48 class hours held over four Friday–Saturday sessions that focus on developing the community leadership capacity of individuals. The training emphasizes an interactive and facilitative style rather than lectures. It draws on the knowledge and skills of those in the room, augmented by the lessons in the curriculum and is accompanied by a year-long community improvement project.

You can read more about this program by downloading our Project PDF. To learn more about how to bring the award-winning Ford Institute Leadership Program to your community, you can contact RDI's Gary Stewart at gstewart@rdiinc.org or visit The Ford Family Foundation website.