Yellow Wood assisted Wayne Fawbush of the Ford Foundation in developing an innovative approach to rural development based on an application of triple bottom line principles to create and maintain community wealth. Wealth was defined by categories of capital including built, intellectual, social, natural, financial, and personal. The work was in conjunction with experienced practitioners in the areas of value chains, clusters, entrepreneurship, and triple bottom line lending. Yellow Wood's contribution included co-facilitation, research, and integration of the four frameworks.
The first phase of the work included defining the four frameworks – triple bottom line financing, entrepreneurship development, cluster analysis, and value chain development - and developing a common vocabulary and set of draft principles regarding wealth-based development.
The second phase of the Working Group work included assessments by each framework of the ways in which interventions related to that framework do or do not address the triple bottom line and/or wealth creation and the extent to which outcomes are or are not being measured. This work resulted in a series of publications available on Yellow Wood’s website.
