This summer marks 15 years that the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute has existed as a nonprofit organization — a 188-acre former cattle ranch atop Petit Jean Mountain tasked with continuing Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s legacy of collaboration and transformational change. 

It is said that during Winthrop’s time living in Arkansas, he held some 200 formal and informal meetings here with business leaders, politicians, writers and thinkers, farmers and locals, friends and family. Without attempting to estimate how many meetings have been held at the Institute since 2005, it’s safe to say we’ve beaten Winthrop’s record many times over. 

Formed by the University of Arkansas System and the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust, the Institute has been through several evolutions since its inception. Before he passed in 1973, Winthrop had envisioned these pastoral, mountaintop grounds as a place of learning, collaboration, and community. Early on, the Institute was certainly a place of community. Locals and tourists would come to sightsee and participate in musical events and gardening expos but the other elements, initiatives that could produce real, transformational change in Arkansas life and policy, had yet to be carved out. 

“I noticed a lot of potential when I started,” Dr. Marta Loyd, our Executive Director/CEO said. “I noticed a lot of loyalty. Many people who worked at the Institute had worked at Winrock Farms, or their families had, so there were a lot of stories and personal connections to the Governor and this place. I saw a lot of potential in the beautiful campus, the historical buildings, and the feeling you get when you drive up the mountain. There was definitely a place to carve out for the Institute.” 

When Loyd arrived in early 2014, one of her top priorities was to secure permanent funding for the Institute, which became a turning point in 2018 when the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust gave the Institute a gift in excess of $100 million for an endowment, which is held and managed by the University of Arkansas Foundation. 

“Because of that, we could really start planning for the future,” Loyd said. “We’re still going to have to work hard and run an efficient operation, but securing permanent funding was a pivotal moment in the life of the Institute.” 

That hard work has culminated in a new, clear mission for the Institute, new programsnew clients, and new solutions. Despite the continued strain COVID-19 has caused organizations like the Institute, we pushed through and have developed ways to hold small convenings safely on Petit Jean Mountain. We’ve also honed our skills with virtual platforms like Zoom to bring our unique form of facilitated dialogue directly to clients, wherever they are working. 

“I think that in another 15 years, without question, the Institute will be sought by the region for collaboratively solving programs around complex issues,” Loyd said. “It’s already happening. Early on, a board member said this about Winthrop, and I don’t know of a better way to put it: ‘Winthrop made people feel like their problems were solvable.’ It’s a big deal that we can make people feel that way, that if they come to us, follow the Rockefeller Ethic, and allow us to guide them through it, they can have hope that they will come out the other side with the change they wanted to see. That will be our legacy.”

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