Funding Rural

About Funding Rural

Funding Rural: A podcast that explores how philanthropy can better serve rural and Indigenous communities. Join host Erin Borla, Executive Director of the Roundhouse Foundation in Sisters, Oregon, as she engages with folks on all sides of philanthropy to better understand the challenges and opportunities facing funders and the folks they hope to serve and support.

Publisher

Roundhouse Foundation

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

25 Feb 2024

Latest episode

20 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 67 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   20 Oct 2026

   Savannah Barrett: Stories Build Relationships

   Savannah Barrett’s deep Kentucky roots have guided her entire career. She’s the Exchange Director for Art of the Rural, a nonprofit that uses creative connection and storytelling to build relationships and bridge divides between urban and rural communities. She co-founded the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange and she’s joined together with others from her community to buy a historic property, the Grayson Springs Inn, and restore it as a cherished community space.

2. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Cory Carman: Supporting Innovation in Ranching

   More than 95 percent of American beef cattle spend the end of their lives eating grain in feed lots. It’s an easy way to get them fat faster. However, a growing number of ranchers like Eastern Oregonian Cory Carman, of Carman Ranch and Carman Ranch Provisions, are finding alternatives. She is a fourth generation rancher who is thinking differently about the animals she raises, the products she distributes and how that impacts the community she lives in. Cory is working to uplift the region and industry she’s in—noting that rural places are willing to take risks and be creative.  But those risks take investment, and often from out of the area. Cory encourages philanthropy to come alongside ranchers to help further inspire that innovation.

3. 

   6 Oct 2026

   Gov. Tom Vilsak: A Career in Office Serving Rural Folks

   Governor Tom Vilsack started out as a small-town lawyer, then mayor, and went on to serve as governor of Iowa for 8 years. He ran the US Department of Agriculture under President Obama and President Biden. Gov. Vilsack is now the CEO of the World Food Prize, which presents an annual award of $500,000 to individuals who have increased the quality, quantity and availability of food in the world. During his time as Secretary of the USDA, he called on the philanthropic community to step up to the plate and provide more funding for rural communities.

Inside a recent episode

Josh Davis: Do Not Underestimate Your Power

Published 14 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] So what's philanthropy's role in ensuring that those systems are working as best as they can? Philanthropy has a critical role in incentivizing and testing and taking risk where those warnings and those proof points can be considered for adoption in the other sectors that make a community healthy. I think that philanthropy has the ability to catalyze how the private sector, our government, how the nonprofit sector, the education, criminal justice, housing sector, how all of these sectors and systems that impact the quality of life for children and families. Philanthropy has a very important role to play in allowing for what has emerging potential to be scaled for unrecognized or undeveloped potential to become emerging. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

19 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

14 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

83

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

71

Contact Funding Rural

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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