In 1994 the Ford Foundation launched the Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI) as a "national demonstration project to help community colleges in distressed regions move their people and communities toward prosperity. It challenged community colleges to become catalysts for economic development and supported aggressive efforts to increase access to education in rural communities" (MDC 2001). In 2002 Ford invested in an experiment to scale down the financial resources for the RCCI program, but not the expectations of success, and to look at ways of institutionalizing the RCCI process. This report describes the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development's results of this experiment by identifying the program activities and analyzing the impact of RCCI on colleges and their communities. It also looks at the colleges' progress toward a sustainable model of community engagement and future prospects for RCCI. (Contains 5 figures, 2 footnotes, and a list of 7 resources.) [Cornelia Flora, Susan Frey, Kristi Hetland, and Pam Cooper contributed to this report. This material is based upon work supported by annual base funding through the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.]