“Now two big-bet funders — Ballmer Group and Blue Meridian Partners — along with regional grant makers and individual donors, are supporting Partners for Rural Impact to adapt the model it honed in Appalachia for rural places in Texas, Missouri, and beyond.
Cecilia Gutierrez, a managing director at Blue Meridian Partners who leads the grant maker’s Place Matters portfolio, is a big fan of [Dreama] Gentry’s work. ‘She made it possible for us to all imagine what this work could look like in rural America.’
When Blue Meridian launched its place-based funding strategy in 2020, Partners for Rural Impact was one of 12 groups to receive support — a $2 million grant in 2023.
While Blue Meridian’s first investment supported the group’s work in eastern Kentucky, ‘it quickly became clear to us that Dreama’s vision for this field and this work was much broader than what she was doing in Appalachia,’ Gutierrez says. A second, two-year grant of $5 million is helping the nonprofit assist other rural communities to develop partnerships among schools, local governments, health-care systems, and other sectors to improve the lives of students.”