The 1996 reauthorization of the Safe Drinking Water Act established the Source Water Protection Program to establish wellhead protection practices and other management efforts to protect public drinking water supplies. Rural water associations across the country must develop a voluntary buy-in to a program that is little understood and underfunded. Because of this, source water protection is a grassroots effort to educate water purveyors, community members, business, industry, agriculture, county, and state agencies to work together to safeguard drinking water quality. Once the stakeholders understand the positive outcomes of this program, the plan takes on a life of its own. But, how do we get there from here? In this session, we present abstracts that highlight efforts establish water protection programs and build stakeholder groups.