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When community members come together, they find solutions that are culturally responsive and rooted in lived experience.
That is especially true in rural places. Organizations are spread across county lines, staff wear several hats at once, and there is rarely a room where everyone doing similar work ends up in the same place. It can be hard to get a full picture of the nonprofit and political landscape, even for the people living in it.
For the past three years, Interact for Health has hosted Rural Community Connect events (formerly known as Rural Receptions) in our rural counties’ service area. These events bring together rural community members and nonprofit leaders to find solutions, form partnerships, and meet their neighbors.
Photo: from 2026 Ohio Rural Community Connect
We launched the events in 2024 as part of our Rural Strategy. Fourteen of the 20 counties we serve are rural: Adams, Brown, Clermont, Clinton, and Highland in Ohio; Bracken, Gallatin, Grant, and Pendleton in Kentucky; and Ohio, Dearborn, Franklin, Ripley, and Switzerland in Indiana. When we evaluated our grantmaking, we wanted to be more intentional about investing in rural communities, knowing they carry health challenges and inequities that come from decades of underinvestment. We wanted to get proximate to the people already working on solutions. Much of that first year, though, was us introducing ourselves and talking about our work.
In 2025 we kept introducing ourselves and started to take on a role as convener. As we formed new partnerships in rural communities, we received direct feedback that these Rural Receptions were on the right track, but still not quite right. The receptions were valuable, but people wanted more time to talk to each other, network, and strategize about what it would take for their community to thrive, and less time hearing from us.
So in 2026, we pivoted the goal. We renamed the event “Rural Community Connect” and shifted the purpose to creating a space for connection, where we invite partners we know, partners we hope to know, community members, and nonprofit leaders, and then get out of the way. We wanted to be an attendee, not the main event.
Photo: 2026 Indiana Rural Community Connect
“We decided to attend because we value opportunities to connect with other organizations doing good in our community. As a growing nonprofit, we still feel very "new" to the scene,” said Cassie Carter, Founder & Executive Director of Letters 2 Literacy. “Meeting others and discussing who we are and what our mission is is still outside of our comfort zone. As two former educators, this isn't something we were trained on. We are really working on developing these skills, and this was such a perfect and welcoming atmosphere for us to do that.”
We still opened by introducing our team and the Rural Changemaker Request for Proposals, but we kept it brief and opened the room for table discussions. To get people started, we offered optional questions:
“We really enjoyed the [2026 Rural Community Connect] and the opportunity to connect with other people who are passionate about serving their communities,” said Carter. “One of our biggest highlights was reconnecting with several local nonprofits that we had not had much contact with recently. We actually made plans to meet for lunch and continue the conversation beyond the event. It was a great reminder of how important collaboration and relationships between local organizations can be.”
One theme comes up again and again with our nonprofit partners: they need time to dream and ideate, not just play defense. Rural organizations are often small, stretched, and constantly responding to the crisis in front of them. We aimed to create a space to connect and time to imagine.
Close to 75 people attended this year's three events. Thank you to everyone who has joined us over the past three years. You pushed us to keep learning and centering community power and reaffirmed that those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions.
We are constantly learning and adapting, so if you have any feedback for our team about our Rural Community Connects, please reach out to our Senior Program Manager of Rural Engagement, Caitlin Bentley-Thayer, at cbentley@interactforhealth.org.
Photo: From 2026 Kentucky Rural Community Connect
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