Building a Thriving Future, Together: Modern Intermediaries as Partners in Community Transformation

As communities face increasing social, economic, and environmental challenges, now is the time to refocus on practices that can build and sustain a thriving future for all. While many organizations have a role to play, intermediaries are uniquely positioned to weave together institutions, communities, and funders in ways that enable lasting place-based transformation. Intermediaries operate at the field level, sitting between grassroots communities and the broader organizational systems—governmental, philanthropic, corporate, and civic—that structure daily life. They add value by catalyzing change through resources, technical assistance, and facilitating learning across communities, even when their roles appear to be in the background.

In this report, Rippel and fellow members of the Intermediary Learning Network (ILN)—including Reinvestment Fund—explore how intermediary organizations strengthen the conditions for communities to thrive. The report synthesizes a decade of field-level learning, including learnings from Reinvestment Fund’s Invest Health and Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities (BHEC) initiatives, illustrating how strategic investment in intermediaries can lay the foundation for lasting change by:

• Amplifying existing community leadership
• Strengthening local partnerships
• Prioritizing belonging and civic muscle

The report showcases several high-capacity, national and regional intermediaries that are using their roles to advance thriving, place-based community investment as a means to uplift our collective future. Taken together, the insights in this report move us from a set of isolated stories and field practice toward a more coherent field narrative—with shared learnings, collective wisdom, and a vision for a future we are building together.

Support for this report was provided, in part, by Reinvestment Fund’s program portfolio with funding by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, along with additional support from The BUILD Health Challenge®, Build Healthy Places Network, WE in the World, Wellville, and The Rippel Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any single organization or supporter.