RCAP's history

The Rural Community Assistance Partnership, Inc. has its beginnings in the late 1960s in a local rural project, called the Demonstration Water Project, in Roanoke, Va. This project, designed by and for low-income people, was organized by the Roanoke Valley community action agency, Total Action Against Poverty, with funds from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO).

 

By 1972, this project had become the core of a coalition called the National Demonstration Water Project (NDWP). Funded by OEO, NDWP was a unique experiment in accelerating the process of social change in rural areas for the benefit of low-income families and communities. Primarily a reform effort, NDWP sought to improve the means by which rural residents, especially those in the low-income bracket, received water and wastewater disposal services. The overall objective of the program was to push for the provision of more and better water and wastewater disposal services nationwide to low-income people at prices they could afford.

 

When it incorporated in 1973, NDWP consisted of the original Virginia project plus projects developed by another community action agency (in West Virginia), two health centers (in Arkansas and South Carolina), a rural electric cooperative (in Florida), and a Chicano uplift/empowerment organization (in New Mexico). By 1976, two additional projects had joined NDWP - a Chicano-controlled nonprofit water company with an ethnic uplift agenda (in Texas) and a self-help housing program (in California).

 

The RCAP model

 

In 1977, the successor to the OEO, the Community Services Administration (CSA), made a planning grant to NDWP to develop a demonstration program aimed at using community action agencies to provide water-supply and sanitation assistance to low-income rural communities. NDWP’s proposal for a Rural Community Assistance Project (RCAP) called for the creation of “intermediate organizations” that would serve as sources of technical support to rural community action agencies interested in becoming involved in water supply and sanitation activities. CSA first funded the program in 1979.

 

Two geographic areas were chosen for the initial demonstration effort - the Northeast and the Midwest. In the Northeast, an organization called Rural Housing Improvement, Inc. (RHI), in Winchendon, Mass., was selected as one project. RHI had been founded in 1969 as the major low-income housing-development agency in New England. As a Rural Community Assistance Project, RHI would add water and sanitation development to its portfolio and would develop staff capability that would enable it to become the center of competence in this sector in the Northeast. In the Midwest, a different model was used. A highly regarded organization devoted to sustainable agriculture - the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Neb. - had been involved in the conceptual development of the RCAP program but did not want to be the project itself. It spun off a new organization, the Midwest Assistance Program (MAP), for that purpose.

 

Over the next two years, CSA designated four additional RCAPs:

 

With these additional designations, the project achieved nationwide coverage. As they were formed, each of the RCAPs joined the NDWP network as full-fledged affiliates.

 

The network in transition

 

By 1981, NDWP consisted of 36 affiliate organizations and was truly a nationwide network. Also in that year, CSA, the primary funding source for both NDWP and many of its affiliated organizations, was abolished. Some of CSA’s programs, including the RCAPs, were transferred to the Office of Community Services in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NDWP itself expanded its funding base to include a variety of federal agencies and foundations.

 

Although the 1980s was a difficult decade for social programs, both NDWP and most of its affiliates were able to weather the changes. By the late 80s, NDWP had achieved many of its goals. The NDWP’s trial efforts had been successful not only at widening and improving service delivery but also at achieving policy reform at the state and federal agency and legislative levels.   In the field, NDWP pioneered the use of cluster well systems, fostered the involvement of rural electric cooperatives in water supply and sanitation facilities development, developed the concept of regional support companies for small rural systems, and was instrumental in obtaining state funding for rural water programs.

 

At the policy level, NDWP was able to achieve significant changes in key funding and regulatory agencies (including a new method of figuring loan-to-grant ratios by the Farmers Home Administration), bring about the first technical assistance program in that agency’s history, support innovative and alternative technology set-asides in the Environmental Protection Agency, and engender an increased emphasis on appropriate technology, operations and maintenance, and affordability in both agencies.

 

In late 1988 and early 1989, the board of directors of NDWP undertook a careful consideration of the future of the organization. After 20 years of successful operation as a demonstration project, the effort was in need of revitalization and a new, more permanent focus. The decision was made to bring NDWP to an end and to rename the corporation and change its structure to formalize the network of permanent RCAP service institutions that NDWP had spawned.

 

The permanent RCAP network

 

The formal transition from NDWP to RCAP culminated in February 1989 with adoption of a revised set of bylaws and approval of a resolution to change the corporate name to Rural Community Assistance Program, Incorporated. The core of the restructured organization was the six regional RCAPs. RCAP, Inc. is governed by a board of directors composed of 12 members, six of whom - the regional RCAPs - are permanent members. The remaining six are selected annually from the RCAP network and the interested public.

 

RCAP’s activities are managed by an executive director and a small headquarters staff under the oversight of the board. The board decided to retain the NDWP staff as the RCAP national staff. A committee structure was established in which six standing board committees oversee the work of the staff and the corporation. The board retained an outside organizational development specialist to assist with a redefinition of corporate purpose and goals. As a result, a new mission statement was formulated: “The RCAP mission is to empower and assist rural low-income people to improve the quality of life in their communities. This is done through the nationwide delivery of onsite technical assistance, training, and advocacy efforts in water, waste disposal, and related areas.”

 

By the end of fiscal year 1989, most aspects of the transition from NDWP to RCAP, Inc. were completed and the permanent corporate structure was in place. In 2001, the national office was moved from Leesburg, Va., to downtown Washington, D.C., in order to give its staff easier access to the funding agencies and to carry out advocacy on Capitol Hill.

 

In 2004, the organization changed its name slightly from the Rural Community Assistance Program to the Rural Community Assistance Partnership. This change was made to more accurately describe in the organization’s name a partnership-type arrangement rather than a uniform, nationwide program. In other words, RCAP, Inc. is an umbrella organization and name, a way to link the individual water and wastewater programs that are run in the six distinct and autonomous organizations in the network. Today the organization is often also referred to as a network (the "RCAP network") - the connected collection (i.e., partnership) of the regional RCAPs or partners [1] and the national office.