04/01/2026
Impact Story: Rendville Historic Preservation Society & The Impact Enterprise Team
Found in Wayne National Forest 🌲, in southern Perry County, Rendville is the smallest incorporated town in Ohio and is rich in African American history. As one of this nation’s early integrated communities, Rendville is a historical example of diversity creating community. Dr. Frans H. Doppen came to OU in 2003 as a professor teaching social studies methods courses and made it his job to make students aware of local history. 📚
When Frans first began bringing students to the Little White House in Rendville, it was “literally an abandoned house,” with rotting food in the refrigerator, clothing still in the closets, and even a dried-out animal carcass hidden in a cupboard. The Town Hall’s exterior stairs were so unsafe that, for nearly two decades, Frans avoided going upstairs. ⚠️ Despite the powerful history of this racially integrated mining community, the physical structures that held that story were on the brink of being lost. 🏚️
Through a connection from a preservation effort, Frans was introduced to the Impact Enterprise team. With their support, the Rendville Historic Preservation Society was formally established as a nonprofit 🤝, saying the Impact Enterprise Ecosystem:
“helped me to take our organization, the Rendville Historic Preservation Society, [and] helped us to establish that as a 501c3 or a nonprofit organization. So we are now officially a statutory a nonprofit organization.”
Becoming a 501c3 opened the door to larger funding opportunities. 💡 Guided by the team, Frans first applied for a small grant to cover windows, but after a system change, the impact team helped him to reapply for the full $10,000 Appalachian Impact Initiative Grant. With that support, the Society was able to complete the drywalling and ceilings in the Little White House and rebuild the hazardous exterior stairs on the Town Hall. For the first time in roughly 20 years, Frans could safely explore the upper floor. 🙌 As he describes it, these changes have transformed how people experience the space:
“Right now, if you walk into the little white house, it actually is starting to look like something again.”
This visible progress does more than improve buildings; it builds credibility and momentum for the preservation work. By stabilizing and restoring the Little White House and Town Hall, the Society can now show community members, visitors, and potential funders that Rendville’s history is not only compelling but also physically being preserved. As Frans puts it, the work supported by the grant helps people see that “this is something that is worth saving” and will “help us gain more support.” ❤️ Their hope is to create a Rendville historic center where people can go to the Little White House and learn about the history there. He says
“So we're trying to save some structure, and at the same time, we're trying to tell the story and recover the history because a lot of that history has just been totally forgotten and lost”
The Impact Enterprise Ecosystem has therefore played a pivotal role in moving Rendville from a fragile vision of preservation toward a tangible, visitable historic site and learning space. 🌟
