This report focuses on the role — and aggregates the wisdom — of a specific set of intermediaries that are doing development differently in rural America. We have chosen to call them Rural Development Hubs — or Hubs for short. We focus here on Rural Development Hubs because they are main players advancing an asset-based, wealth-building, approach to rural community and economic development in this country. They are the most visible actors in rural America designing and implementing efforts that simultaneously:

• Increase and improve the assets that are fundamental to current and future prosperity: individual, intellectual, social, cultural, built, natural, political and financial capital.
• Increase the local ownership and control of those assets.
• Always include low-income people, places and firms in the design of their efforts — and in the benefits.

In short, Hubs focus on all the critical ingredients in a region’s system that either advance or impede prosperity — the integrated range of social, economic, health and environmental conditions needed for people and places to thrive.