Tool
All the People, All the Places
The All the People, All the Places report provides a valuable landscape analysis for funders and other partners focused on the challenges and opportunities facing our small cities and rural areas.
Demographic trends
Many rural areas have struggled in the wake of economic globalization and automation. The report describes how decades of misconceptions and disinvestment have resulted in the unique challenges facing rural working families, ranging from the loss of rural jobs to the rise of public health issues.
However, the report shows that a new understanding about race, class, and democracy in rural areas and small cities can lift up great opportunities for engaging in multiracial organizing for change. Promising rural issues range from safe drinking water to ambitious climate change and economic development policy, and more:
- Bringing manufacturing jobs back to many rural areas and small cities
- Supporting family farms to thrive in the face of agriculture monopolies
- Innovative ideas for helping local retail and small businesses
- Reversing the boom and bust cycle of extraction-centered economic policies
- Addressing public health issues like the opioid epidemic
Learn about rural voting trends
The report highlights unexpected voting trends in the wake of the 2016 and 2018 elections and provides insights for donors on key issues that activate rural people to participate in democracy for the long haul. Rural voters care about many of the issues that people in metropolitan areas care about, but these similarities can often go unnoticed, and underemphasized. The majority of rural voters feel the system is rigged in favor of the rich, they support offering free tuition to local community colleges and trade schools, and want Medicare to cover all Americans. All the People, All the Places shows that connecting with rural voters on these issues goes beyond messaging, requiring deep community engagement.
Political and cultural challenges outside of major metro areas are born from indifference and a lack of investment, not lack of opportunity or talent.
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Framework and opportunities for civic engagement
Our report acknowledges the connection between philanthropy’s withdrawal from rural and small-town areas, and fragile organizational and civic engagement capacity, while providing a framework for donors to reverse this trend. All the People, All the Places discusses the unique factors that go into rural organizing and notes there are genuine moral imperatives in these communities to drive change.
Resources on Civic Engagement
Heartland Fund provides tools and original research to better understand rural voters.
Rural Map and Dashboard
Rural classifications to the country’s census tracts, counties, congressional districts, and states.
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Rural Policy Action Report
Featuring priority legislation and executive action that supports working families and strengthens rural communities. The report also highlights numerous policy successes and the ongoing challenges people in rural communities face.
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Rural Voter Polling
The polls explore rural attitudes and point toward ways to engage rural communities.
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