By Chelsea Bartlett, Associate, Data, Strategy, & Communications – Shining Rock Ventures, for Appalachian Community Capital and the Appalachian Community Capital Data Hub. With a contribution from Donna Gambrell, President & CEO, Appalachian Community Capital.

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In July 2025, Appalachian Community Capital brought together more than forty leaders from across Appalachia, including CDFIs, banks, philanthropies, and community organizations, for the Rural Resilience Forum in Pittsburgh. The purpose, to answer the questions: what is resilience, what does true resilience look like, and how do we build it?

Over two days, participants examined lessons from recent disasters and co-designed a shared roadmap for preparedness, protection, and long-term recovery. The Forum began with a simple truth: resilience must be built before disaster, not after. From that starting point, participants shaped eight interconnected pillars and themes, defining Appalachia’s path to lasting resilience.

The Eight Pillars and Themes of Action:

• Insurance and Preparedness: Ensuring that small businesses understand their coverage and can plan for disruptions before the next storm.
• Assurance Products: Exploring community-based, pooled, and trigger-based models that expand access to protection and deliver faster, fairer post-disaster funding.
• Equity and Asset Building: Developing ownership-backed, evergreen, and patient capital models that recycle returns locally and build community wealth.
• Storytelling and Trust-Building: Using shared narratives to strengthen relationships, visibility, and cross-sector coordination across Appalachia.
• Succession Opportunities and Gender-lens Resilience: Addressing the coming “Silver Tsunami” of ownership transitions, while embedding gender-lens investing and leadership across small businesses and CDFIs.
• Community Resilience Strategies: Designing frameworks that integrate lending, preparedness, and local engagement through trusted regional partners.
• Data and Technology Enablers: Operationalizing tools like the Appalachian Community Capital Data Hub, and the DeepRoots dynamic ecosystem-as-a-service communications initiative to strengthen data-driven decision-making and coordinated community action.
• Employee Ownership and Resiliency Models: Supporting worker-owned transitions and shared-asset structures that preserve cornerstone businesses and stabilize employment.

Together, these form more than a task list; they’re a shared foundation for the region’s next phase of action. They mark the beginning of a coordinated effort to align capital with communities, and insight with impact, across Appalachia. The Forum may have been just two days, but its vision extends far beyond: a region where preparedness is proactive; protection is inclusive, and resilience is built to last.

The Rural Resilience Forum marked a turning point for Appalachian Community Capital and its partners. It produced not just recommendations but a blueprint for a coordinated regional response. Resilience begins with connection between people, capital, and purpose. The Forum laid out the foundation. What comes next is building upon it, one layer at a time.

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As Donna Gambrell reflected:

“What made this gathering unique was its focus on turning shared values into shared action, connecting data, storytelling, and capital around the common goal of resilience. Across every conversation, from preparedness and equity to technology and trust, the message was clear: our communities already have the strength and ingenuity they need. Our collective role is to support that strength, connect the systems around it, and help it grow from the roots up.”

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Appalachian Community Capital remains committed to turning these insights into action, aligning capital, data, and collaboration to strengthen rural communities, expanding access to financial tools, and advancing inclusive economic resilience across Appalachia.

This blog marks the first in our Notes on Resilience series, beginning a deeper exploration of the eight pillars shaping Appalachia’s path to resilience. Throughout the series, we’ll focus on the practical question of how resilience is built, examining real strategies, partnerships, and tools that make resilience tangible. The series will culminate in a Rural Resilience Roadmap that brings these insights together, returning to the broader questions first posed at the Forum: what is resilience, what does it look like, and how do we build it.