2020 Impact Report

Brushy Fork Leadership Institute, like many of the communities and organizations we serve, has spent a good deal of 2020 learning and adapting to our changed and changing world. We'd like to share with you some of our accomplishments and initiatives with which we've worked over the past year. We appreciate the gifts of time, effort, and resources that our friends and colleagues have contributed to the work in central Appalachia. Be sure to check out the ways you can connect to some of these efforts and projects!

Word Cloud from closing session of the online Brushy Fork Leadership Summit.

2020 Online Leadership Summit

The first online Leadership Summit was attended by 89 community leaders from Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. This year, Brushy Fork intentionally included Berea College students in the Leadership Summit, with 4 students attending. The online format allowed attendees to choose to attend either one or two six-hour workshop tracks from a lineup of topics focused on the theme: Leading Through Challenge. Workshop tracks were led by a diverse group of new and returning expert-track leaders. Read more about the workshops offered at the 2020 Leadership Summit here.

Regional Partnership & Network Coordination with What's Next EKY?!

Since April, What’s Next EKY?! pivoted to connecting folks from across Eastern Kentucky through a series of seven monthly online Community Connections. Over 157 unique Eastern Kentuckians came together to share their successes, struggles, and ideas related to a variety of pressing community challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, including: supporting local businesses, coping with local budget cuts, regional tourism efforts, and creatively connecting with community online. In 2020, Brushy Fork has provided over 400 hours of coordination services to the What’s Next EKY?! Steering Committee, Regional Partner organizations, and topic-focused working groups.

Interested in showcasing a local organization, business, or project that you’re proud of in your Eastern Kentucky community? Join the WNEKY?! Facebook group!

RuraLead Learning Initiative

Brushy Fork has served as a learning partner representing the Appalachian region for RuraLead: a Learning Initiative supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which brought together a coalition of leadership development organizations from rural and tribal communities across the country. The partners in RuraLead are interested in exploring how people move into leadership in rural and tribal communities, what supports exist for them, and what challenges or gaps they face. Each partner has hosted a Learning Journey—reimagined to be online. While virtual, the origin stories told by each of the six unique leaders on the Appalachian Learning Journey transported participants and fueled deep conversations between 40 funders, program practitioners, and grassroots leaders from Appalachia and beyond. RuraLead Partners are also conducting over 100 interviews and planning to host a series of Idea Summits that will contribute to a report that summarizes the initiative’s findings.

Are you part of a rural or tribal leadership development effort? Complete this inventory tool to get on the map. Click here to learn more about the RuraLead initiative.

Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky Affiliate Boards Planning and Leadership Development

In 2020, Brushy Fork hosted 10 one-hour webinars for board members of Affiliate Community Foundations of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky with an average of ten board member attending each webinar, representing six Affiliate Community Foundations. Topics included strategic grant making, group norms for effective communication, meeting facilitation, the Endow Kentucky tax credit, donor development, and the transfer of wealth. Board members gained skills on running board meetings, making group decisions, and developing donors. In addition, two Affiliate Community Foundations created strategic plans to inform their leadership around community issues, fundraising focus, and investment of resources in their communities.

Strategic Planning for the New Opportunity School for Women in Berea

In early 2020, Brushy Fork worked with the board and staff of the New Opportunity School for Women to finalize a strategic plan that was started in 2019. Eleven board members and three staff participated in the planning process. The group revisited and confirmed the organization’s mission and vision, expressed guiding values and principles, and created strategies and action plans for operational and programmatic development that reflect the current situation women are facing in Appalachian communities. The board adopted the plan in February 2020.

Brushy Fork Leadership Development Program Design

In 2020, the COVID pandemic interrupted the delivery of an intensive community leadership development program that builds on more than three decades of experience serving established and emerging leaders. Brushy Fork had worked with a planning team in Clay County, Kentucky, to design a program that built on existing momentum in that community and that engaged people who are often marginalized from leadership. While the pandemic prevented the program from being offered, Brushy Fork staff created a flexible framework that will be ready to roll out as soon as pandemic restrictions allow.