Since 2019, Prevette, 33, has worked with the Aspen Institute
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Since 2019, Prevette, 33, has worked with the Aspen Institute in an odd-couple pairing. Aspen, best known as a think tank, is headquartered in a tony Washington, D.C., neighborhood and has a campus in its namesake Colorado town, a millionaire’s playground in the Rockies. Each summer, the institute hosts the Aspen Ideas Festival, where it gathers what it describes as “brilliant leaders and thinkers” to turn “great ideas” into “something grander.”
Prevette — who’s whip smart and quotes from writers like Ursula Le Guin and the Rev. Martin Luther King — sees philanthropy as decidedly less grand. “We’ve got to stop hyperintellectualizing things and just care about people.” Once, when she planned to camp out while attending an institute event in Aspen, a staffer intervened: “L.B., I love you, but you cannot camp. You need to be showered.”
In Wilkes County, Prevette directs work you would expect at a local Rotary Club. Aspen is closing out its first year here having made 20 grants, each for $5,000. Money went to a speech pathologist to start an after-school LEGO club. A food pantry to stock its shelves. A yoga teacher to start a class for young girls.
Each grant will achieve a modicum of good, but collectively, they target one of America’s most talked-about problems as the country barrels through another nasty, brutish, and oh-so-long election season: fractures in the body politic that make it hard for people to get along, much less get things done. Polarization, once seen as an affliction chiefly of Congress, now threads itself through all parts of life.
That’s true in small towns, despite the myth of harmony embedded in rural America’s mystique. Politics, religion, and income divide Wilkes County just as they do the country. Even the river that splits the county seat, Wilkesboro, and its largest town, North Wilkesboro, represents a divide.
Aspen’s working premise: If you create and support a cadre of dynamic local leaders, they will build a sense of community and pride of place so strong that differences fall away. Yes, Prevette says, those $5,000 grants are paying for little things. “But those are the only things we all agree on.” Greater good will follow.
Several new philanthropic ventures are testing this small-bore, hyperlocal strategy to fight polarization and strengthen communities.
The New Pluralists, a grant-maker collaborative begun in 2021, is among the philanthropies today working from the bottom up. Members range the ideological spectrum from Stand Together, the social-good apparatus of conservative magnate Charles Koch, to the liberal Rockefeller Brothers Fund. New Pluralists aims to deploy $100 million to organizations and individuals who address division and isolation.
Recently, the Emerson Collective, the philanthropy of Laurene Powell Jobs, announced $125,000 grants to a dozen local leaders pursuing bridge-building projects.
The Trust for Civic Life — a $10 million donor collaborative initiated by Rockefeller Brothers, the Omidyar Network, and Stand Together and launched this year — will disburse grants to community-building efforts exclusively in small towns and rural areas. Changes in election law and governing institutions like Congress “are absolutely necessary” to tamp down polarization, says Stephen Heinz, president of Rockefeller Brothers. “But even if we could accomplish them all, it wouldn’t be enough. The institutions of our democracy have to stand on the foundation of a strong civic culture. And right now, our civic culture has been degraded and is really very weak at its roots.”
The Aspen Institute’s program, called Weave: The Social Fabric Project, began in 2018. David Brooks — public intellectual, New York Times columnist, and chronicler of national politics — started it after reaching a personal nadir. In the early 2010s, although standing atop a mountain of achievement, Brooks found himself living alone in a Washington, D.C., apartment. His children were grown, his marriage had ended, and he was so consumed by work that the kitchen utensil drawer was filled with Post-it notes. “I came to idolize time over people,” he said at Weave’s kickoff event in 2019. “I came to idolize productivity, being on the move, over having relationships.”
Despair and isolation are a common denominator in America, Brooks concluded, fueling record numbers of drug overdoses and suicides that represent a “silent Pearl Harbor.” The answer to this threat? Local champions for the common good, the community builders who bring people together, lift them out of isolation, and give them a sense of meaning, purpose, and hope.
“The soul sings when it serves the good,” Brooks said at the event.
On a chilly morning in North Wilkesboro, Prevette is talking about the Aspen program at Masthead, a co-working space. The door opens every few minutes, and nearly every time, she throws a wave and a greeting: “Hey, darlin’!” Anyone who stops to chat gets a touch on the elbow or a deep hug.
Such reflexive warmth contrasts with the bitterness and anger you might expect given Prevette’s formative years in the county. At school, Prevette drew scorn for her poverty and sexual identity. Her church condemned homosexuality. As a high-school senior, while at the county’s bluegrass festival, she was attacked, bludgeoned in the face with a tree branch, and left on the muddy ground bleeding and unconscious. “You fucking dyke,” her attacker said.
Prevette left the county for college and, like a lot of Wilkes kids, planned to start life elsewhere. But in 2009, she returned home after her father, Kris, died unexpectedly. Neighbors, church families, and other farmers brought her food, helped on the farm, and pulled her close as she grieved.
Something changed inside her. “I had grown up here feeling like I was constantly standing on the outside of this community, like I was someone who wasn’t wholly embraced,” she says. “But when he died, it didn’t matter that I was that lesbian girl, that I wasn’t quite the way the girls were supposed to be around here. It mattered that I was Kris’s daughter.
“And it was a reminder that I am still part of this community, that I am still someone to be loved.”
Prevette was 19 at the time. She left Wilkes again but returned later. After her attack, she had felt alone, with no one to help make sense of things. She came back to support others who felt outside the community and who, perhaps, had met with hatred.
With a friend and an Episcopal church, Prevette started HangOut, which hosted events for queer youth. At her job as a trainer in the call center of the hardware giant Lowe’s, she was openly gay and found that people came out to her. Around town, she wore clothes with queer-affirming slogans, her presence serving as advocacy.
Her message: “We’ll never be able to say no one’s going to hurt you. But I promise you — you won’t hurt alone.”
Prevette says that many she encountered in Wilkes had never met an openly queer person. She determined to put aside the fear and anger that persisted after the attack — “I couldn’t carry that anymore” — and look for the good in everyone.
“I’m going to assume you love me and you’re my friend, you want to be my buddy. And I’ll let you prove me wrong,” she says. “Because if I assume you’re a jerk, you have to work to treat me well.
“You’d be amazed at how many people don’t want to be a jerk, you know? And how much goodness there is.”
In the fall of 2018, Prevette was invited to a dinner with David Brooks, who was visiting Wilkes as he toured the country in advance of Weave’s launch. She recognized the writer but couldn’t place him; the only David Brooks she knew was a high-school football coach and choir director. “Later I Googled him and was like: ‘Oh yeah, that’s why I know that guy.’”
So much of philanthropy is PR. And small towns don’t give you as good PR.
It wasn’t long before she was traveling the country with Aspen, part of Weave’s bid to bring attention to community builders — “weavers,” as it calls them. It was a heady experience that included a speech to Hollywood executives, writers, and actors. She met Georgia activist Stacey Abrams in the green room; afterward, film stars Geena Davis and Kerry Washington congratulated her with hugs.
Prevette was also selected for the inaugural class of the Civil Society Fellowship, a joint program of Aspen and the Anti-Defamation League. She joined 22 others, all aged 45 or younger, billed as “next generation” leaders to tackle America’s divisions. The group — which met over nearly five years and traveled abroad and in the United States — included journalists, entrepreneurs, government officials, lawyers, educators, and designers. The experience changed her life, she says. “My fellows are like the coolest people I’ve met in my life. I adore them.”
Still, as Prevette moved deeper into philanthropy circles, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was an outsider. She never got her college degree, and she was the only fellow who had never traveled outside the United States. When asked what it was like to be gay in rural America, she would respond, “Not nearly as hard as being a hillbilly around you.”
At times, Prevette says, Appalachia can feel like a colony. Mountaintops are blown off for the coal to power big cities. Stereotypes, she says, obscure the region’s creativity, resilience, innovation. Her anger still rises at an eight-year-old New York Times article that depicted Wilkes County chiefly through the eyes of out-of-work, despair-ridden residents hanging out in a vape shop.
“In America, regardless of how progressive or woke you are, it’s still OK to make fun of us,” she says. “It’s still OK to judge us. It’s still OK to look down on us.”
Over time, Prevette began to question what could feel like an extractive relationship with Aspen. She used up her vacation time from her Lowe’s job for travel and fellowship events and took occasional leave. It was more than a year before Aspen provided any compensation. She had never heard of an honorarium: “Crazy! People get paid for this?”
Prevette began to push for investment in Wilkes County akin to Aspen’s work in Baltimore. Beginning in 2020, Weave in partnership with M&T Bank had started making $5,000 grants to community-building groups and individuals in Baltimore.
Prevette describes blunt conversations with Weave and fellowship staff. “What is Aspen doing for Wilkes County?” she asked. She persisted with little success. A kickoff event in Wilkes might draw a crowd of 100 or so, whereas a big city like Baltimore could command five times that, she says. “So much of philanthropy is PR. And small towns don’t give you as good PR.”
Weave executive director Fred Riley, who arrived in 2020, says the pandemic and restructuring played a role in Aspen’s slow response to Prevette’s concerns. Weave eventually developed its first strategic plan, formalized the program, and created a “speaker’s bureau” with compensation for weavers. It also secured a Wilkes funding partner in the Walton Family Foundation’s education program.
Walton already made small grants to connect communities and people in northwest Arkansas, the foundation’s home base. Its education program wanted to try something similar, in part to battle the polarization undercutting its work, says Bruno Manno, a Walton senior adviser.
For more than 30 years, Walton has championed charter schools, which initially enjoyed strong support among politicians and philanthropies in the ideological middle. “But even that bipartisan consensus has broken down,” Manno says.
Weave administers grants in Baltimore and Wilkes with a light touch. Applicants prepare short essays or videos to outline their project and hoped-for impact. An advisory committee of local leaders selects winners. Twice during the yearlong grant, grantees meet with Weave staff to talk about how things are going. There are no reporting requirements.
“You don’t have to turn in tax documents or show your receipts,” says Brittany Brady, a Wilkes advisory committee member and a K-12 instructional specialist. “It’s trusting you to do what you say you’re going to do.”
Ideally, grants go to people who are already superheroes in their communities. In Baltimore, those chosen as weavers have been doing meaningful work for a long time and know firsthand what their neighbors need, says Dominique Goss, head of M&T Bank’s charitable foundation. “We don’t know everything. And we don’t pretend that we do.”
Like in Baltimore, Weave looks for grantees in Wilkes with a commitment to the county and a track record of effective work. Because Walton’s education program funds Weave in Wilkes, most grants aim to help kids. Educator Belinda Marino, a master at hustling grants, had raised money for her elementary school to, among other things, install solar panels. Her Weave money paid for STEM equipment and activities in her classroom.
Luke Jarvis, founder of Wilkes Youth Life Development, has been working with children and teens since he was a teenager teaching Boy Scouts how to tie fishing lures, among other things. With Weave money, Jarvis is running alcohol-free after-prom events and launched the Teen Action Council to encourage community outreach and advocacy.
Takiyah McCathern, an assistant principal at a high-poverty middle school in Wilkes, is perhaps the quintessential weaver — someone for whom serving the community is just what you do. McCathern, who grew up in the county and worked hard in school to earn a scholarship at Appalachian State, started her career at an alternative high school. “I’ve just always been a person who wants to help people,” she says. “It’s important to me to make a difference in my community and for me to have some purpose beyond my own thing.”
Not long ago, McCathern, a single mom with three kids, discovered a couple of students, brothers, who couldn’t play on the school’s sports teams because their family didn’t have money for the required doctor’s physicals. McCathern raised cash for the exams from colleagues and watched as the boys’ classroom performance jumped.
Today, her $5,000 Weave grant is covering physicals, shoes, and equipment. McCathern has created a logo for her program and is planning a fundraising drive. “I’ve already got some people who have said, ‘Oh yeah, let me know when you start your campaign.’”
Advocates of hyperlocal strategies such as Weave acknowledge there’s little hard science behind the approach. Indeed, Aspen’s work in Wilkes might seem like throwing pebbles in the ocean — and avoidance of systemic issues like income inequality and racism that many see as the root of the country’s divides.
County political and philanthropic leaders haven’t embraced the program, Prevette says. At the start, local foundations asked about accountability — just how would Weave ensure money was used appropriately? It also appears that Weave hasn’t wholly escaped political polarization. Prevette and others involved are proud liberals in a county where President Donald Trump earned 78 percent of the vote in 2020. There hasn’t been a Democrat on the county council since 2010.
“Here, as in lots of places and small towns, the same families and same names kind of keep things the way they want them to be,” McCathern says. She and the other grantees “are pushing back on that a little bit.”
Prevette says the advisory committee was selected to include members from all walks of life — including some who promote the program among conservatives and the region’s political leaders. Still, only one elected official attended the kickoff event where the first winners were announced.
They were perhaps skeptical of something new. Or suspicious of something with roots in “the swamp” of Washington. “Maybe they didn’t trust us,” Prevette says. “But if we keep showing up and we keep doing things right, who knows?”
It’s clear Weave is benefiting Wilkes by connecting community builders and elevating their work, thanks in part to unusual grant making. At the kickoff event, Weave put a spotlight on all the projects that had sought support. A proposal to fix a mountain-bike trail hadn’t been funded, but volunteers grabbed shovels to do the work.
Weave connections helped Marino, the grant maestro, raise more than $100,000 for a new playground. “We’re such a small county, but it’s still so spread out,” she says. “There are not many events for people to collaborate and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing? How can I help you?’
You can come see me every weekend in a T-shirt that says, ‘Dyke. Dyke. Dyke.’
“I’ve met some of the most incredible people. And I’ve built such strong relationships with them.”
Riley, Weave’s executive director, says no one can predict what Weave’s small grants might spark. Many of today’s nonprofit giants started with someone who had little more than a big heart. The YMCA, where he worked for many years, was begun by George Williams, a 22-year-old department-store worker who wanted to help young men escape the rough streets of London in the late 19th century.
“This is no different than how all those big organizations got started,” Riley says.
Prevette eventually hopes to attract local businesses and donors as sponsors for projects. Now that Aspen and Walton have proved the concept, she says, plenty of people will tie their name to an investment in the community chosen by residents.
Merle’s, the bar Prevette owns with friends, would be the first to sign up. She and her friends opened its doors in 2021, fashioning it from a 152-year-old cottage in Wilkesboro. In January, the county’s chamber of commerce named it the small business of the year. Drinks include signature cocktails like the mezcal Ain’t From Around Here. The menu also features a large selection of mocktails to help nondrinkers feel at home.
Everyone knows that Merle’s is frequented by the gay community in Wilkes, Prevette says. “You can come see me every weekend in a T-shirt that says, ‘Dyke. Dyke. Dyke.’” Still, she has declined suggestions that Merle’s host drag shows, fearing they would deter some from coming to a space designed to be a community gathering spot.
Merle’s welcomes everyone, she says. One of the regulars is a county commissioner who spearheaded a “Christian heritage” resolution to “urge all citizens to proclaim Christianity’s important influence in the foundation and life of our County, State, and Nation.”
“Change moves at the speed of trust,” Prevette says, “and trust moves at the speed of relationship.”
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