Donations to the school declined during the World War I period (1917–18), but Ritchie traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City to solicit funding. He had a unique plan for expansion and development called the Farm Family Settlement Program. Whole families would live at Rabun Gap, with the men learning agriculture, the women studying homemaking and health care, and the children continuing with regular studies. The Carnegie Foundation, the John D. Rockefeller family, and other northern philanthropists provided generous support for his idea. However, it was Ernest Woodruff, of the Coca-Cola Company and Trust Company of Georgia, who proved to be the bedrock supporter of Rabun Gap. According to school legend, Ritchie went door to door in Atlanta's Inman Park neighborhood asking for donations; at the Woodruff home, Emily Winship, Woodruff's wife, contributed money from her household fund and urged her husband to help. (Over time, several members of the Woodruff family, as well as the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, have made donations to the school.) With additional support from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the school expanded with more acreage and the construction of farmhouses and barns. The farm family program remained successful until the 1970s, when textile manufacturing became key in Rabun County.