In this episode of the WWN podcast, host Kate Jetmore chats with Rebecca Gilliam, executive director of the Wayne County Foundation, about her journey of returning to her hometown of Richmond, and the deep sense of community that drew her back. Rebecca shares her experience of becoming a mother through adoption and how it shaped her perspective on family and small-town life. They also discuss the recent influx of grant funding into Wayne County, the role of philanthropy in helping the community thrive, and how local leaders are working to ensure lasting impact that will benefit everyone here.
Transcript
Rebecca Gilliam: I’m Rebecca Gilliam and I’m the executive director of the Wayne County Foundation.
Kate Jetmore: From Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana, I’m Kate Jetmore. As a native of Richmond, Indiana, I’m excited to be sitting down with some of our neighbors and listening to the stories that define our community. My guest today is Rebecca Gilliam. A Richmond native, Rebecca attended Indiana University and the University of Minnesota Duluth and began her professional career working in the museum field. At the end of 2019, she began serving as the executive director of the Wayne County Foundation, where she’s excited to help individuals and families create a philanthropic legacy and support nonprofit organizations through grant making and educational resources. In 2023, Rebecca was selected as a Mitch Daniels leadership fellow, enabling her to connect with thought leaders across the state. Welcome, Rebecca. Thanks so much for joining me on the show today.
Rebecca Gilliam: I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Kate Jetmore: Here on the podcast, we’re all about getting to know our neighbors here in Wayne County, whether they’re from here originally or moved here from somewhere else. That’s often the case that people have chosen to settle here. So if you would, walk us through your history with Wayne County.
Rebecca Gilliam: So I’m a Wayne County native. I feel so fortunate to be back living where I started. So I grew up in Richmond, I went to Richmond High School, and then I spent the start of my career moving still in Indiana, but I moved to Indianapolis and then to Muncie to work in the museum field, and I had some great opportunities there. And then fortunately, in 2019 I had the opportunity to come back to Wayne County to work at the Wayne County Foundation. And it was, I’ll say it’s by choice that I’m back here. I do love my hometown. I have family here. I love the small town feel. It’s a great place to raise a family. And I wanted to come back and very fortunate to have that opportunity.
Kate Jetmore: I also grew up in Richmond and left. And I never came back to live, as you have, but I’ve always come back. So I have a high school student, and ever since he was a baby we’ve come back every single summer, so I understand that. And I’m curious if you can talk in a little more detail about what it is that drew you back here.
Rebecca Gilliam: I like knowing your neighbors. I like going to the grocery store and seeing people that I know from church or from my professional career. I want my child to have the opportunity to be down the street from their grandparents. I want to raise near cousins. I had that experience growing up and it was really important to me to have that for my daughter. So that’s what small town living is, and Richmond is a great place to make that happen.
Kate Jetmore: Was that surprising to you, Rebecca, that kind of small town living would be something that would be a draw for you? Because, I mean, when I was a kid I couldn’t get out of here fast enough. I did not want to be in a small town. What about you?
Rebecca Gilliam: It’s funny, I’m not sure I thought about it so much. I knew I would leave to go away for college. I wasn’t sure what opportunities would be available for career. I mean, you kind of scan the whole variety of options, but after living in a little bigger area, Indianapolis, I lived in pretty much downtown Indianapolis for several years, it was good, but you found yourself always trying to make it smaller. You wanted to find your niche. You wanted to make connections, whether that was through volunteering, through your work, through friends, through church. I was always trying to make it a tighter-knit network. And I found that living in a smaller town was so easy to make that happen. And then we are so close to any big city that you want to go to. It feels like the best of both worlds. I can adventure out if I want to or I can be home and walk, bike, drive to nearly anything I need, and I love it.
Kate Jetmore: That is such an amazing observation about sort of how we approach or how many of us approach big city living. We do try to make it smaller. You want your neighborhood pharmacy, the place where you buy your fruit, hopefully a place that’s within walking distance.
Rebecca Gilliam: Yes.
Kate Jetmore: And you don’t want to experience the big city as a big city on a daily basis. You want to have your little neighborhood and your places that you go. And to acknowledge that Richmond already is that is so empowering. That’s wonderful.
Rebecca Gilliam: Yep. I love it here, and it’s been a real blessing to be back in town.
Kate Jetmore: And wouldn’t you agree also that things sort of change when you have a kid? I mean, I think you have a high schooler. I have a high schooler.
Rebecca Gilliam: Yeah.
Kate Jetmore: And as I understand it, you went through the journey of adopting a child. I know many of our listeners out there will have been through the same journey, although of course every story is different. What did adoption look like for your family?
Rebecca Gilliam: So having children, having children around, that’s been always part of life. And I joke that I’m pretty sure my parents would’ve opened the door for anyone that needed to come to town. I mean, from when we were very young we were a partner family with students from Earlham College when we were really little. I can remember we would be a… For students that were from overseas and couldn’t go back home for holidays we would be available. And then my dad was in rotary, so he was the lead for the exchange program. So we always had students and kids and families. We did an exchange program with Northern Ireland for a really young child. So-
Kate Jetmore: Wow.
Rebecca Gilliam: … children and families and extended families that were coming and going in my own, I guess biological family unit, was the norm. So it honestly did not seem out of the ordinary to build a family in a, maybe a little different way. I actually unexplained, but I can’t have children. No idea why. I actually, it’s far more common than most people realize. So it’s not distressing to me. And so I talk about it quite openly because I think it’s important for folks to know that it isn’t. It seems very, very easy, and it isn’t for everyone. But there are many ways that families are created. And whether that’s through being a foster family, whether that’s an exchange or host family or an adoptive family, what was most important to me was to open my home and my life to a child or two or six or whatever I was supposed to have to raise, grow, and help become hopefully a great part of a community just like I want to be.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, yeah. And I want to thank you for being so frank about your own realization that you can’t have children, and that is so important. It’s so important to say it out loud so that other people know that they’re not alone.
Rebecca Gilliam: Right, right. I think that’s what surprised me is that every medical professional and even other would want to be moms. It isn’t always easy. I say, “The movies make it look super easy,” but it isn’t all the time. But it was by choice. This was the best thing that could have happened. My daughter is amazing and we are meant to be together, so I wouldn’t have it any other way, and it’s great.
Kate Jetmore: And how did you find each other?
Rebecca Gilliam: We actually did private adoption. So that’s really pretty awesome. The birth parents work through an agency and they select families from a variety of folks who have put themselves out there as interested in adoption. So I met the birth mother and she had I guess a good feeling about us. And we were selected to adopt her child. So I’ve always been very open about it, my daughter’s very aware, and it’s good.
Kate Jetmore: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing such an important part of your personal life. I’d love to shift to your professional life if you’re open to that. It seems like you will be after talking about your personal life.
Rebecca Gilliam: Sure.
Kate Jetmore: There is a lot of money flowing into Wayne County right now due to a series of wonderful grants that have been won over the last several months. Can you talk a little bit about what that flow of funds means for the people in this community and how we can best navigate that flow of money and handle it in the best possible way?
Rebecca Gilliam: So we are in a really interesting and unique point in time, some of it for negative reasons. The COVID pandemic certainly changed how we worked. And it also, through some legislation, made funds available to communities. And then our state also recognized that there is a great opportunity to grow economies, strengthen towns, and especially rural Indiana. So there’s been additional funds available coming this direction. And then I think that we’ve got grant making organizations like Lilly Endowment that took a look at the state and said, “Oh my, we have all this incredible investment. We want to be part of that growth.”
And so what you see is communities like Wayne County are seeing an incredible influx of funds to help solve some of our, I’ll say largest quality of place problems. It’s no mystery we’re in a declining population. And when you have declining populations, all of your issues are exacerbated. So how do these funds get allocated to improve quality of life, to encourage folks to stay in Wayne County, live, play, work? Also, how about the folks that are commuting in from outside of Wayne County? How do we get those folks to stay right here? That’s what the opportunity of all this funding affords us. And it will require strong leadership so that it’s not a one-off or a band-aid, but a true solution and growth that can be sustained over time.
Kate Jetmore: I appreciate all of that and I find myself wanting to know more, wanting to know more details. So-
Rebecca Gilliam: Yeah.
Kate Jetmore: … just from a place of curiosity, I’d love to know your thoughts on how we can make sure the greatest number of people in our community are included in the benefits that this money will bring.
Rebecca Gilliam: So what I have seen because the foundation has been a part of this is intentionality. There have been engagement across the county with individuals very intentionally going into the towns and having those conversations, asking for feedback, seeking input on what are the greatest needs, working directly with the town councils, with the main street organizations. I’ve been really encouraged at that ability to sit down with neighbors and have those conversations. And I’m a little biased, but I feel particularly encouraged because the foundation has stepped up and become a leader in that area because we really believe that the way it can be positive for all of our citizens is if there’s an opportunity for input and participation.
Kate Jetmore: That makes all kinds of sense. And what I hear you saying is that, in addition to expressing ideas and pursuing projects and ideas, the foundation is really dedicated to listening and being open to other ideas, the ideas and the needs that are coming from these specific communities.
Rebecca Gilliam: Yes. And that is where we can take that information and make sure they’re given back to the groups that are working daily on spending these funds or implementing the projects. We can make sure that that is coming to the table, that those voices are being amplified so that we have a great end result.
Kate Jetmore: Well, again, I know we said this in the intro, we’re talking to you in your capacity as the executive director of the Wayne County Foundation. And I believe you’ve been in that position for about five years now, right?
Rebecca Gilliam: Yes. I’m in my fifth year. Time has gone very fast.
Kate Jetmore: I’ll bet, I’ll bet. What are some of the biggest misperceptions about the foundation and its work? This seems like a great opportunity for you to maybe correct some of those things that people don’t entirely understand.
Rebecca Gilliam: So I think that people see the foundation as making grants to nonprofit organizations. And also, probably students and families who are going on to higher education, they see us as a scholarship organization. That’s true. All of that is correct. However, we’re actually a lot more than that. We’re a resource for nonprofit organizations. We come alongside. We want all of our nonprofits to be amazing at what they do, achieve their mission, utilize resources. If we can provide funds, that’s a wonderful way that we can help as well. But I spend a lot of my time working with individuals and families.
So I’m working with folks to figure out how their charity can be maximized in the community, and not only today, but well after they’re gone. I’m so encouraged. We have so many incredibly philanthropic people in our community. They’re giving a lot of times very quietly behind the scenes. And they’re planning for how does some of the wealth that they have gained over life, how can they then continue to make that make a difference well after they’re gone? And I think that’s just an incredible opportunity. And I feel to get to work with families and to think about that and to help create a plan for that future is really inspiring. And so that’s what I think a lot of folks don’t know that happens behind the scenes. I’m a bit of a charitable financial advisor, in a way.
Kate Jetmore: And the word that sort of comes to me, and you may have even said this word, is legacy. That people are thinking beyond their own lives, which isn’t something that you see too much of anymore. I mean, you look at the greatest architecture in the world, and people who worked on those buildings knew that they would never see the final stone laid. And it’s really inspiring to see people give, in a way. It’s sort of the modern day equivalent of building that building. You’re building something that will outlast you and that will benefit the community for years to come.
Rebecca Gilliam: Oh, I love that analogy. That’s exactly what we’re doing. And I actually think more people want to do that. They want to create that legacy. Oftentimes, you don’t know how. Where do I start? I might be pretty comfortable giving. I use church as an example. People are pretty comfortable, they understand that process. Some have a nonprofit or a charity that they’re particularly compelled to be generous with, or they’re a volunteer and then they want to add monetary resources. But what could it look like if you allocated a portion of your wealth? And I’ll use that very loosely. I mean, it’s not a certain dollar amount. It is what is meaningful in your life that you make available to somebody else. There is no minimum, there is no maximum. It’s really individualized, and it all matters. And I think that it’s sometimes just helpful to have somebody work alongside you to make that happen.
Kate Jetmore: Absolutely. I really appreciate how you’ve defined that, and I think our listeners will too. I wanted to go back to what you were saying about not-for-profit organizations here in Wayne County. There is a wealth of not-for-profits here in Wayne County, and that’s a good thing. But I also wonder, I sometimes wonder if there are so many that there’s a lot of overlap when it comes to their activity, when it comes to their mission, and also when it comes to who people can afford to give to. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.
Rebecca Gilliam: Yes, there are a lot of nonprofits. The quantity I’m not sure is exactly the concern we should be focused on. But I think what you mentioned, the idea of who is being served? And what niche is that nonprofit filling? There are finite resources. I always say money is rarely the issue, but you also have time. You have human capital. Who’s going to be working? How are they going to be working? So I think that strategically thinking about the most effective and efficient way to deliver the service that you’re trying to provide should be thought about. And in a fair number of cases, yes, there should be probably some consolidation and some collaboration so that we’re really being good stewards of time, talent, and resources.
I oftentimes tell folks, “Really, the amount of money in Wayne County, there really is probably plenty.” I mean, we have very generous people, we have a lot of resources. But that isn’t a good reason to create a nonprofit or to not have a nonprofit. It really should be about your end result. What is the impact you’re hoping to have in our community? And whether that is an arts and culture organization, social service, education, how are you doing that most effectively? Because at the end of the day, you want to be a great steward of all of these resources. So you want to steward those donors’ funds. You want to be mindful of people’s time and talents. So that’s how I like to look at our nonprofit community. And partnerships and collaborations shouldn’t just be a buzzword, it should be the way we do business because I believe we can do business better.
Kate Jetmore: And I’d like to end on the word impact, which is one of the ideas that you just-
Rebecca Gilliam: Yes.
Kate Jetmore: … brought into the conversation, and to thank you and the Wayne County Foundation for all the work you’re doing and the impact you’re having in Wayne County. So Rebecca, I want to thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I loved getting to know more about you. And I want to wish you and your family all the best.
Rebecca Gilliam: Thank you.