2026 Gather Reflection

Earlier this April, the Appalachia Funders Network gathered in Ashland, Kentucky, a river city that holds its history in one hand and what it is becoming in the other. Where rail lines once carried industry and now trace new paths forward, we came together for our 2026 Annual Gathering under the call Forging Forward: Fortitude, Hope, and Renewal.

In a moment thick with uncertainty, shifting federal landscapes, and climate strain, we refused to be met with heaviness. We met with laughter, and music. We came together under the steady, unshakable knowing that this region has always made something out of what it’s been given: Endurance and creation. More than 260 people arrived rooted in that feeling. 

So we flatfooted and walked alongside Appalachian cryptids. Playful, strange, and familiar, they reminded us that belonging here has always been more about presence than perfection. Across conversations on civic infrastructure, on arts and culture, on rural news, on place-rooted investment, we returned again and again to the truth that the people closest to the work are closest to the answers. 

We began with the Appalachian Capital Lab, a working space where funders, intermediaries, and capital providers discussed and brainstormed what it takes to move money here. It was a reminder that investment in Appalachia looks less like a single thread and more like a quilt; piecemeal, relational, built over time. Not in clean lines, but in careful stitching. Durable because it has to be. 

In storefronts and community spaces, we met the folks shaping Coalfield Development Corporation, and listened to the stories held inside the C.B. Nuckolls Community Center & Black History Museum, experienced the living memory of Heritage Farm Museum and Village, and saw the possibilities that memory was bringing to the fore. Each stop is a reminder: development, at its best, is not imposed.

Back together, in sessions, we asked harder questions. How do you measure hope? What does capacity really mean when time, trust, and people are the currency? What does it look like to treat local news not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure?

Programs coalesced. Ideas sharpened. Next steps took shape as commitments already in motion. Like the hands that came together, piece by piece, to build a paper quilt with Margo Miller, our event and this Network is a shared artifact of vision, of labor, of care. It is something made together, that could not have been made alone.

We closed with reflections from Silas House, who reminded us that to love a place like Appalachia is to love it honestly. Reminders that it is okay to hold its contradictions, and to stay present to its truths. A call to action to believe, even still, in its unfolding.

And across it all, threads held fast: self-determination. Local knowledge. The quiet, persistent power of collaboration. We know that this region’s future is not a far-off idea. It is being built now. In meeting rooms and on main streets, in classrooms and kitchens. In conversations like the ones held on Appalachia's Front Porch, where we sat for a spell, together.

And, as is often the case, if there was one thing the Front Porch made clear, it’s this: We are not waiting on what comes next. We are already making it.