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One of the questions looming over Democrats and the progressive movement in the past several years has been how they can expand their influence in rural areas. This isn’t just because rural populations are disproportionately poor and could benefit from policies like Medicaid expansion, but because rural voters are vital to Democratic electoral victories.
Yet Democrats have struggled to connect with rural voters, and states like North Dakota, Arkansas and West Virginia have turned solid shades of red in the past decade. Although some of these losses have been offset by Democratic gains elsewhere, the Senate map isn’t getting any more forgiving. To build a governing majority in Congress, as well as to do better in state-level races, progressives have no choice but to invest in organizing in places that currently look very unfriendly.
Filling in that gap is Rural Democracy Initiative, a nonprofit that, through its 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) arms, funds organizations working in rural areas. These are often places that aren’t targeted by groups focused on driving up turnout in cities and require a different set of tactics. Because of the importance of rural voters in coming elections, Blue Tent strongly recommends the Rural Democracy Initiative and believes donors should make it a priority. (Read about our methodology.)
What are its core strategies?
RDI is primarily a grantmaking organization, and passes about 85% of its operating budget onto other groups. Like Movement Voter Project, another organization highly recommended by Blue Tent, RDI’s value to its donors is that it can identify small organizations that donors ordinarily wouldn’t be aware of, including ones that are just starting out. It takes research and networking to find these groups, and further effort to vet them, tasks that the vast majority of donors aren’t capable of doing themselves.
RDI also serves a “convening function” among groups that it funds. Because many of these organizations are small, they may not be connected to the wider infrastructure of progressive or Democratic groups, and groups in different regions may not be aware of similar work being done by other organizations. By connecting these groups, RDI helps them share research and strategies.
Finally, RDI plays an important role by laying out a progressive policy agenda for rural areas. Its Rural Policy Action Report presents a comprehensive set of recommendations “to improve the lives of people in small city, town and rural communities.”
How does it spend money?
Like many nonprofits, RDI has a 501(c)(3) arm that funds groups doing nonpartisan work (the Heartland Fund) as well as a 501(c)(4) arm (the Rural Victory Fund) that focuses on groups doing more direct electoral engagement. In 2021, the Heartland Fund distributed $5.2 million and the Rural Victory Fund gave out $3.5 million.
Of this money, the majority went to either national groups or groups in RDI-identified “key states.” These states include ones like North Carolina and Georgia that are targeted by most progressive nonprofits because of their importance in elections, but RDI spends in some states that are rarely in the national conversation, like Alaska, where RDI’s two funds deployed a combined $500,000 in 2021.
RDI also spends money funding larger-scale partnerships. On the c3 side, this means initiatives like the Rural Climate Partnership, which focuses on climate policy in rural areas and was launched in 2021 with three grants. On the c4 side, this includes the Winning Jobs Narrative Project, a collaboration between several organizations and progressive-aligned research firms to produce a tested message focused on working and jobs that can be used by any campaign or organization.
Many RDI grantees make use of deep canvassing, which means training canvassers to have long, in-depth conversations with potential voters, often with the goal of persuading them to change their minds about something. Training canvassers to do this and having these long interactions is time- and money-consuming, but RDI believes that rural voters are primarily “persuasion targets,” meaning organizers need to do a certain amount of work to bring them over to their side. In many cases, organizers are going out into communities where there isn’t a large, visible progressive presence, so step one for groups is simply to introduce themselves to a potentially skeptical audience.
What is its track record of achieving its goals?
RDI’s overarching goals of building power and making change in rural areas are, by their nature, long-term affairs. The money given to Alaskan organizations, for instance, won’t immediately push Alaska to become a blue state, or even necessarily lead to short-term policy changes at the state level. But arguably, that funding has already borne some electoral fruit with the victory of Mary Peltola in a 2022 special election for Alaska's only House seat, making her the first Native Alaskan woman elected to Congress. We see RDI’s long-term mindset as an important strength in an era when progressives need to find ways to make new gains against the backdrop of intensifying polarization and political deadlock.
Does it have strong leadership and governance?
RDI is largely led by people who have lived in rural areas and understand these communities, and has been praised by its grantees for its approach. The group clearly knows what it’s doing in the rural organizing space and hasn’t had to pivot to different approaches or strategies as some other post-2016 groups have done.
What metrics and milestones does it use to measure its success?
In 2022, the organization’s goal was to move $20 million in spending between its two funds, the Heartland Fund — its 501(c)(3) arm) and Rural Victory Fund, its 501(c)(4) arm — which would mean nearly doubling its 2021 grantmaking capacity. It also aims to staff up to the point where it is spending 15% of its income on staff salaries, which its leadership believes will help it grow. RDI also closely tracks the demographic breakdown of its grantees, and its 2021 impact report highlighted that 41% of its funding went to groups led by or focused on Black, Indigenous, Latino, Asian American or immigrant communities.
Metrics for the impact of its grantees are complicated because RDI-funded groups work on so many different projects across different timelines. The success of a project like the Winning Jobs Narrative is difficult to judge. Over time, improved messaging strategy among progressive groups and campaigns could result in some electoral and policy victories, but the contribution of the WJN is likely to be hard to ascertain.
How transparent is it about its spending, results and learning from its mistakes?
RDI’s impact reports are straightforward and describe where its money has gone and what those groups have achieved. It’s more eager to celebrate its achievements in public than describe whatever mistakes it may have made, but that is hardly unusual, and it should be commended for its transparency.
Is it committed to racial and gender equity both internally and in its strategies?
Rural areas tend to be whiter than big cities, and some of RDI’s grantees by necessity are focused on outreach to white people. But RDI looks for antiracist groups and groups led by people of color, and this proactive approach has led it to fund a wide variety of groups focused on nonwhite rural populations. In fact, a point that RDI makes often is that rural America is not nearly as white as many people imagine; nearly a quarter of residents of these areas are nonwhite and many are immigrants.
Does it collaborate well and is it respected by its peers?
RDI is highly praised by the groups that it funds for its understanding of how organizing in rural areas works. Not only does it provide monetary support to organizations that aren’t on most donors’ radar, it helps grantees connect with other groups that are facing the same problems or that are organizing similar populations. This convening function is important, because groups doing rural organizing may not be aware of groups in other states doing related work.
It’s also important to note that many of RDI’s grantees are relatively low-profile, and whether they are new or long-established, these groups aren’t plugged into networks of donors or other progressive groups. Rural advocacy is rarely top-of-mind for Democrats, and it can feel like lonely, obscure work. RDI’s stamp of approval, in addition to its money, can be an important sign to its grantees that their work is being seen and appreciated.
Does it have clear and realistic plans for the future?
The clarity of RDI’s mission and the way it fills a neglected niche in the progressive infrastructure means that its future plans are fairly straightforward. It wants to continue to build its fundraising and grantmaking operations and move more money to rural progressive groups that are doing good work.
Conclusion
A donation to RDI is a bet on the future. The groups that it funds are trying to make inroads in communities not known for their friendliness to Democrats, and in many cases, this is a complex, long-term, and expensive project. Many of the organizations and initiatives that have received RDI grants are doing cutting-edge work when it comes to outreach and persuasion, but it’s impossible to know whether these efforts will be sufficient to counteract the well-documented trend of rural populations skewing Republican.
But progressives can’t ignore rural areas. The electoral system in many ways privileges rural states and rural voters, and the only path to major progressive gains at the federal and state levels is through doing better with rural voters. Even if efforts to organize rural voters result in Democrats losing by smaller margins among such voters, it could pay big electoral dividends. Of course, improving the lives of rural Americans — many of who live in poverty and die prematurely — should also be a goal for progressives in and of itself.
Donating to RDI is a good way for donors to boost this important work, and we highly recommend RDI. Giving to this group should be a priority.