<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1NCMTB_0vQwEaK600" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1NCMTB_0vQwEaK600" width="2048" height="1710" ><figcaption>Hiring sign. (Photo by Karen/Flickr)</figcaption></figure>As the Biden administration ends, a recent pilot funding program focused on creating jobs and supporting workers in an innovative, flexible way could shape Biden’s rural legacy. <a href="https://www.eda.gov/funding/programs/recompete-pilot-program">The Recompete Pilot Program</a>, authorized for up to $1 billion in the 2022 <a href="https://new.nsf.gov/chips">CHIPS and Science Act</a>, hopes to support areas where prime-age employment rates – including workers aged 25 to 54 – lags behind the national average. The program was given $200 million in initial appropriations split among six grantees, but policy advocates and leaders hope its shown impact will lead to full funding. “I think of Recompete as a demonstration of what we’ve been trying to get the federal government to recognize and do,” said Chris Estes, co-executive director of the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group who focuses on rural prosperity. “Distressed communities need the flexibility and longer scale investment because their whole history is episodic funding that’s very transactional, very limited, and that hasn’t resulted in much transformation because you can’t build any momentum that way.”Although not limited to rural grantees, half of the six award winners are rural coalitions of counties, towns, and Tribal nations, which is proportionate with half of eligible areas being nonmetro. By allowing communities to come together without tight population and geographic requirements, Recompete reduced the barriers rural communities lacking in government infrastructure face to receiving funds. According to Estes, there are fewer rural organizations equipped to apply for and handle large grants. Allowing applicants to establish regional coalitions supports areas without nonprofits or governments able to apply on their own. “In the past, particularly in rural areas, there’s a lot of people who counted as an organization. If you’re applying an urban lens that locks people out, particularly informal organizations or the ability to think about community development beyond just jobs and workforce,” Estes said. “The flexibility of program design allows people to bring the folks together who know the community best, who are thinking about the community as a whole or the region in a holistic way, and seeing all the elements that come together make a community economic development project successful.”One example is the North Olympic Peninsula plan in Washington state, granted $35 million, it includes two counties, five tribal nations, a local community college, and other community organizations. Since the 1990s, following a local recession, the area has faced persistent struggles including low workforce population growth and a lack of available jobs. They’ll now get to support the workforce and employers and grow ground transportation infrastructure through mass investments. Mike French, Clallam County commissioner who served as the lead applicant, believes the project was successful in hearing all voices in the coalition, especially younger leaders coming in. As the plan will be implemented and funds spent, coalition members across counties are also dealing with different staffing capacities, and being supported by the Economic Development Administration (EDA). “The resources that are available to each region are very different, and we wanted to be mindful of that,” French said. “We wanted to make sure that we were devoting the appropriate resources to address that disparity.”Acknowledging rural capacity barriers has been a main tenet of the <a href="https://www.rural.gov/">Rural Partnership Network</a> and Aspen’s <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/community-strategies-group/thrive-rural/">Thrive Rural Framework</a>, a result of speaking with over 200 rural leaders about their needs. Giving flexibility and control to rural leaders who know their communities best has the greatest chance of success, according to Estes. “For most other federal programs, the capacity is assumed or demanded,” Estes said. “You have to show how high capacity you are in order for us to invest in you, which is a good governance strategy, but if you’re trying to get to the regions where people are really struggling the most and for the longest amount of time, you’re talking about places that don’t have that capacity.”Recompete also allows funds to be used for wraparound services helping workers hold jobs, such as healthcare and childcare. According to Tony Pipa, a senior fellow at the Brookings institute who launched and leads the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/collection/reimagining-rural-policy/">Reimagining Rural Policy Initiative</a>, most funding programs are designed around a specific development objective which hurts communities who have other underlying issues. He hopes Recompete will lead to shifts in rural policy acknowledging this, but sees the need to gather data on its success first. “We need to be doing a better job of evaluating the interventions that we’re making available and investing in third party evaluation,” Pipa said. “I think a lot of data that we have on rural is self reported data. It’s hard for them because they don’t have the capacity nor the expertise sometimes to be able to do that, nor are they getting the funding to be able to do that.”Recompete, in its first phase, selected 22 total groups who came together and presented their proposals. Pipa and Estes both hope these plans can find other funding opportunities, and should be looked at as strong, ready-made candidates. “EDA has given them a seal of approval by making them a finalist, even though they weren’t able to grant money, and that should send a strong signal to philanthropies and impact investors and banks and community development finance institutions and others that have capital that might be interested in investing,” Pipa said.Further funding appropriation is uncertain at the moment. Estes believes the Biden Administration deserves credit for this shift to community-led rural investment, but serves as a pilot that needs continued work. He hopes both Harris and Trump administrations would want to continue Recompete as a nonpartisan program, especially considering both vice-presidential candidates have rural backgrounds. Estes is also looking to the Rural Partnership Program, another possible round of flexible funding not just limited to EDA funding. “It’s really changing the structure to recognize that rural regions are different from urban and suburban,” Estes said. “The nuances of everything are important and that involves ongoing, permanent systemic change to how these government agencies work individually and work together. Since the seventies, we’ve had an approach to work in cities as we were trying to recover from a lot of the concentrations of poverty and white flight and disinvestment. But we’ve never really had a unified rural development strategy.”Regardless of the next administration, French hopes the North Olympic Peninsula Plan will serve as a model for further, flexible rural capacity building and development. The plan also includes partnerships with state agencies for data collection for evaluation and any changes needed while implementing funding. “Whatever administration takes over, we want to make sure that we deliver that message that we want to be a success story,” French said. “We want to be a template for other rural regions around our country of here’s how you can use a coalition approach to come up with a regional strategic plan.”Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.</div></body>

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Organizers Hope Federal Program for Flexible Capacity and Workforce Development Could Become a Blueprint for Rural Funding

As the Biden administration ends, a recent pilot funding program focused on creating jobs and supporting workers in an innovative, flexible way could shape Biden’s rural legacy. The Recompete Pilot Program, authorized for up to $1 billion in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, hopes to support areas where...