Rural Cross-Sector Collaboration

Abstract

Schools throughout the United States apply comprehensive community partnership strategies to address students’ in- and out-of-school needs. Drawing from models like the Harlem Children’s Zone, Promise Neighborhoods, and full-service community schools, such strategies call for diverse professionals to reach beyond their own organizations to collaborate with complementary partners. Extant research on cross-sector collaboration focuses disproportionately on urban settings. This qualitative study examined three years of cross-sector collaboration in “Midvale,” a rural community in the western United States. Applying the conceptual framework of social frontiers, it illuminates how issues of difference, competition, and resource constraint impacted cross-sector collaboration in Midvale’s rural context.