RIDER: Rural Innovation Done Right

In the wake of the pandemic and amidst authoritarian pushback and the AI revolution, we have taken stock of what the impact management movement’s future is, and we believe it’s about the value of human connectedness.

Thanks in part to a referral from our colleagues at 60 Decibels, we had the privilege of doing a project for the systems innovators at Rural Opportunity Institute whose purpose is close to the one that inspired our business originally. They listened to hundreds of community members to create a system map of the root cause of generational poverty in rural North Carolina. The human-centered design approach they take to identify, test, and improve solutions that can be scaled inspired us to team up with them to explore the system conditions that account for a persistent problem that impact management seeks to address:

Why do innovators who have soundly demonstrated their ability to deliver results still struggle to attract the resources to realize their full potential?

The rise of blockchain, AI and other technologies; human-centered design; 21st century multiculturalism; the climate crisis; looming authoritarianism; and the rise of the sustainability and impact investment professions all point to opportunity to update what impact management is, and how it serves the ultimate purpose of a world with well-being for all. Our effort to collaboratively define, test, improve, and scale this way of working is called RIDER: Rural Innovation Driving Equitable Resilience, or more simply, “Done Right.” Its ramifications we believe go far beyond rural.

If you are interested in learning more about RIDER visit our site and reach out to us. You can also keep up to date with what we are up to with RIDER and our other projects by joining our newsletter here.

RIDER at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Rural Opportunity Institute and SVT Group came together with multiple community leaders from across the country to discuss innovative solutions to address rural child poverty. Click below to learn more about our conversations.

Rural Innovation Done Right: Systemic Solutions for Rural Prosperity

On Friday, June 28, 2024 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in partnership with the Rural Opportunity Institute and SVT Group, hosted a hybrid event focused on case studies and strategies for tapping the economic potential of rural America. The event featured rural and global innovators working in various ways to eradicate poverty in communities. The public event was followed by an invitation-only roundtable discussion on rural innovation, impact management, and impact investing.

This one-of-a-kind event builds upon and informs the RIDER challenge: SVT and ROI’s initiative to “smash worlds” together to advance our collective work toward a day when our way of working naturally results in the end of poverty. We invite systems innovators and impact management professionals, the media, corporations, investors, grassroots organizations, policymakers, rural stakeholders and more to engage.