What rural out-of-school time programs can teach the field about quality, data, and storytelling

By Damon Johnson, Chief Impact Officer, BellXcel. 

Rural out-of-school time programs are doing some of the most consequential work in this field. And too often, almost no one outside their communities knows it.

This isn't a quality problem. Many rural programs demonstrate extraordinary commitment to young people, with staff who know every child by name and communities that treat youth programs as essential. The gap is structural: too many of the field’s tools, frameworks and funding conversations were built around urban scale, large teams and robust evaluation budgets.

This spring, with support from the New York Life Foundation, we hosted the Rural Innovations in Out-of-School Time webinar series, focused on program quality, data collection and impact communication. Featured practitioners included Shawn Pietila of the San Carlos Unified School District on the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona and Aaron Vaughn of the Tokata Youth Center on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota.

Three lessons rose to the surface: quality should be measured in context, data should help programs make decisions, and small numbers can carry big evidence when paired with story.

Rural constraints are real. so are rural strengths.

Session 1 began with an honest accounting of what rural programs navigate: thin staffing pools, long transportation routes, directors stretched across too many roles. The field can better support rural providers by naming these realities without letting them define what quality looks like.

But rural programs also hold assets that are consistently undervalued: deep community trust, staff who are neighbors and relatives, and small ratios that allow every child to be genuinely known. High-quality rural programs lean into those strengths intentionally. They understand that quality does not require scale. It requires intention.

That is a lesson the broader field should carry: quality frameworks that assume large teams and formal pipelines can make excellence in rural programs harder to recognize.

Data should work for programs — not just funders.

When we asked webinar participants what word came to mind with data collection, the chat was filled with "overwhelming," "scary" and "cringe." For too long, data has been used as a hammer rather than a flashlight — something imposed on programs from the outside rather than a tool they use to understand their own work.

Shawn's approach reframes that entirely. His most useful insights often start with paying attention. His team noticed that 60% to 70% of their middle school students were failing vision screenings – a factor that could be limiting their academic success. Within two weeks, Shawn had partnered with a mobile vision care provider, and 787 students had two free pairs of glasses each. The data had been hiding in plain sight; someone just had to connect the dots.

BellXcel tries to cultivate that habit with our partner programs: noticing, documenting and acting on what's already there. Programs that own and understand their data make better decisions — and write stronger reports.

Small numbers need context, not apology.

Aaron Vaughn grew up on the Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Nation, and started volunteering to lead and organize youth activities at age 12. He has been the Director of the Tokata Youth Center since 2015, serving 471 kids — essentially every child in the community. When funders ask about growth and scale, his answer is direct: there is no one left to reach. The story is not expansion. It is depth.

In the webinar series, Aaron shared a moment that captures what depth looks like in practice. During a week when Tokata's staff were training, some of the kids tracked down Miss Rose — the youth center's cook — at her home. They knew she'd have food. That moment, Aaron said, is exactly the kind of story that gets lost when programs are only asked to report enrollment numbers and attendance figures. It doesn't fit in a spreadsheet. But it tells you everything about what the program means to the community.

Aaron also addressed what to do when the data surprises you. Tokata’s year-over-year attendance dropped by nearly 3,000 visits after the local school launched wrestling and other extracurriculars. On paper, a decline. In context, evidence that young people had more options — which was exactly the goal. Context is not spin. It is accuracy. And providing it is the rural program leader's responsibility.

The impact reporting framework we shared is intentionally simple: a one- to two-page document showing who the program serves, how it operates, what changed for young people, and one human story that brings the data to life. Aaron's filter for deciding what goes in: “the grandma test.” If you'd share it with someone you love who isn't in the field, it belongs in the report.

The field needs to hear these stories.

Rural programs already have the quality, the relationships and the evidence. What has been missing is a stage that matches the scale of their impact — and an audience willing to look more closely at what rural leaders already know.

If you work with rural programs, fund them, evaluate them, or tell their stories, we hope this series helps you ask better questions: What strengths are already present? What data is already available? And what stories would help others understand the full picture?

Watch the full series:

Session 1 — Quality Beyond the City: Building High-Quality Programs 

Session 2 — Measuring What Matters: Data Collection in Rural Youth Programs 

Session 3 — Small Numbers, Big Stories: Impact Reporting in Rural Youth Programs