Giving Compass' Take:

• This Nonprofit Quarterly post highlights the efforts in Randolph County, Indiana, to create stronger economic development through community-based partnerships and a more comprehensive definition of wealth.

• This approach can apply to all areas of the U.S., but should be especially effective in places that have been traditionally neglected by philanthropy.

• For example, here's why rural communities need coordinated housing assistance.

Many rural communities struggle to find ways to stimulate and maintain the local economy and build community wealth. Those that succeed have moved away from more traditional approaches of economic development and have embraced a more holistic way of thinking about the economy that considers local assets and various types of capital needed to catalyze development. One community employing this approach is Randolph County, Indiana, where the local economic development corporation has embarked on an economic development planning process in conjunction with the Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research, as well as the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI). This new effort will focus on building community wealth through emphasizing the community’s overall well-being as a driver for economic development, and using economic and social data to inform strategy. For nonprofits working on economic and community development in rural areas, this new venture highlights valuable ways to partner with local institutions.

RUPRI has several programs that address challenges confronting rural America. Through their Rural Wealth Creation Analytic Program, the institute identified eight types of capital that are interrelated and are synthesized into a comprehensive framework on rural wealth. This framework rests on two central theses: 1) Wealth — defined in a comprehensive fashion — must be the focus of well-being, and 2) comprehensive wealth is the stock, or value, of all assets; and well-being depends on the benefits that flow from these various assets.

By defining wealth more comprehensively, RUPRI’s approach offers insight into how to build wealth by drawing upon multiple types of assets. In their methodology, RUPRI has identified physical, financial, human, intellectual, political, natural, social, and cultural capital as categories of assets that work in tandem to create the quality of well-being in a community.

Read the full article about embracing equity in rural settings by Derrick Rhayn at nonprofitquarterly.org.