Philanthropy
Rural Giving Needs to Grow
Rural America faces huge challenges, yet it seems to be off the radar of much of organized philanthropy.
While a 2005 study by the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers reported a “rapid rise in rural philanthropy,” a study two years later by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy concluded grantmaking behavior and trends were “skewed heavily toward support for urban-based or urban-focused programs.”
And last summer, at a Council on Foundations conference on rural philanthropy, former President Bill Clinton said “foundation activity in rural American has been woefully inadequate.”
So depending on one’s perspective, the rural-philanthropy glass may be half full or half empty.
Either way, it is not nearly big enough.
While home to an estimated one-fourth of the U.S. population of over 300 million people, rural America lags urban and suburban America in investment in the infrastructure that is critical for success in a fiercely competitive global marketplace.
The good news is that efforts are underway to try to change that.
Rural America itself “needs to change the way we are viewed,” Sherece West, president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in Little Rock, Ark., told nearly 600 people attending the annual conference hosted in Raleigh last week by the North Carolina Rural Center.
“We need to dispel misconceptions among national funders about rural America,” West said.
Rural groups, for example, should push for more equitable distribution of charitable and taxpayer dollars so that rural America is not treated as an afterthought by lawmakers and grantmakers, she said.
She called on foundations to be stronger “advocates, activists and accelerants” for rural philanthropy.
And she urged rural groups and local and statewide foundations to push their national counterparts to better understand and support the needs of rural America, she said.
At last week’s conference, the Rural Center released a new study that says local communities themselves represent a “potent sources of funding that often goes unrecognized.”
In particular, the study says, community foundations can “help lead the transformation of rural places to economic sustainability and cultural vibrancy.”
To do that, the study says, community foundations “will need to more aggressively build their assets and form partnerships with community development leaders.”
Also key to “capturing rural assets,” the study says, is “increasing knowledge about complex issues surrounding donations and bequests of real property, particularly land and timber resources.”
That, in turn, will involve “expanding the current professional education for financial and legal advisers to include rural-specific issues and increasing the number of qualified advisers available to rural donors.”
Community foundations in the state also “need to become increasingly inclusive and broad-based through their governance outreach to donors, community-engagement processes and programs.”
Private foundations can help, making grants to help community foundations, for example, increase their capacity to engage local givers and retain philanthropic assets in their communities.
To strengthen America overall, foundations need to wake up to the needs and economic potential of rural America and invest more time and attention to building its philanthropic capacity.
Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper published by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.
Simply putting boxes and lines down on paper doesn’t guarantee that your organization will make better decisions.
Long-term investment in organic agriculture will provide above-market returns, environmental impact, and—in the developing world—enormous social impact.
Q&A with KoAnn Skrzyniarz of Sustainable Brands.
Critics of Obamacare have taken away attention from important aspects of the act such as its focus on keeping people healthy.
The misalignment between the expansive goal of “health” and a cramped
Entrepreneurs are setting up shop in the nation's urban food deserts.
A riveting memoir by Egyptian revolutionary—and Google marketing executive—Wael Ghonim.
COMMENTS
BY Alan E. Nelson, Ed.D.
ON November 13, 2009 11:20 AM
Having grown up on a farm in southwest IA, I agree that the rural culture has significantly changed the last 25 years and is in need of more attention. I am the founder of KidLead, a non-profit dedicated to leadership training of 10-13 year olds. We piloted America’s first, concentrated leadership training program for this age group in rural, Eaton, CO and found amazing interest and people resources in that community. Still, most of our marketing energies for a premium resource such as LeadNow go to urban and suburban areas where there is greater concentration of people and organizations that serve them. This is but one example of how great resources sometimes miss the rural market, further diminishing the opportunities for these families to develop.
Alan E. Nelson, Ed.D.
author of KidLead: Growing Great Leaders
BY Mackenzie Andersen
ON November 13, 2009 08:16 PM
It’s not just equitable distributions between charitable donations between rural and urban- but also between scale and industries. I just returned home from an entrepreneurial conference, in which I pitched for a $25000,00. Grant, which for my small business would make the difference between extinction and profitability. I prayed that I would be in the zone when I delivered my pitch and my prayer was answered. The pitch went perfectly and the panelist said, “That was excellent” “You have a great vision” The response couldn’t have been better but I was not selected as a semi finalist.
I watched three quarters of the pitches of the semi finalists before leaving. They consistently had enough funding from grants and government and what not that giving them $25000.00 would be like giving me $10.00.The amount of the grant isn’t significant to them in relationship to what they already have- and of course they were all in fields qualified as “social good” – involved in green energy or some other politically correct cause. The person who was chosen over me is marketing an athletic T-shirt that doesn’t have the toxins in it that he claims other athletic shirts have. Our ceramics don’t have toxins, but for all the centuries that ceramics have been being made, they have not been found to have toxins or pollute the environment- so no social goodness points for ceramics.
Another semifinalist was doing something with harnessing the energy of ocean waves and was talking about profits in terms of billions. That sounds worthy- but in the course of five or ten minutes how is one to know that this technology really works? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t- and for all the billions of dollars that he was talking about making, he said that it would create 100 Maine jobs. In proportion to the profit, that hardly seems like significant job creation.
The person next to me leaned over and said “See they are all people with money behind them”. Ok- if that is what they want to fund, just say so. It makes me feel had because it appears that anyone that does not have large sums of money already in the pocket never had a chance- and we all had to register for the conference in order to make a pitch. The asking price was $175.00 to $225.00.
I find it fundamentally unethical that the conference organizers encouraged businesses operating at such vastly different scales to compete with one another. Especially when they seem pretty set on going with those with the most funding. They are just using businesses that operate on a smaller scale as a means to raise funds for themselves. This is a grant- not an investment, and so I do not understand the purpose of awarding it to a business to which it is only a drop in the vast ocean of their funding- as opposed to a smaller business to whom the same amount of money can make a significant difference.
Before the pitch session, we received an example of the scorecard and one item was just “financials” – not much explanation, but in retrospect it seems like it is graded by how much money the business has. I will not participate again unless financials are related to the overall impact that the grant money would have on the business. If it were stated that way. Of course, smaller businesses would have the advantage- unless the group offering the grant establishes an amount of money that a company has to already have before they qualify- but then smaller businesses would know they do not have a chance and would not be likely to register for the conference and pay the pricy fee.
In the end I wish I had not participated since just about every venture group, commercial bank, and government sponsored business support group in Maine was represented and they all went for the same basic choice. So I do not feel there is much point in dealing with those organizations, with the possibility of one banker. I didn’t stay until the end and so maybe I missed an out of character choice Or- Maybe it’s time for us to seriously look at having our line produced in a buisiness friendly nation – and if such a place exists- maybe it is China.
I think that what this entrepreneurial group funded is on the same level as our government using the Tarp Funds to bail out big business. OK- I get it, Big businesses have more multiples than a small business- unless you take small businesses collectively- which has traditionally accounted for more than 50% of jobs and certainly offers greater diversity- plus they are the fundamental basis of the middle class- without which there cannot be a democracy.
BY Nirund Jivasantikarn
ON November 14, 2009 06:41 AM
Once again, the world should and need to follow America in this movement. I like the word “Rural Philanthropy.” Bangkok and great cities of the world where wealth and power are concentrated must earnestly channel their resources into the rural where most of the countrymen live in dire circumstances to help provide access to better education, health, and economic opportunity for more productivity and thus better living.
Having spent more than a decade in America for good education and earned the product of learning and observing the American philanthropy which helps make America a great nation, I founded American-Thai Foundation which works with the counter part Yonok Foundation in Thailand to support education and community development in upcountry and rural Thailand. We were able to raise millions of dollars (hundred of millions baht) from United States Agency for Development (USAID), friends and supporters in America and in Thailand to build a small college in Lampang, northern Thailand in 1988 to meet the need of young people who may not have the opportunity or the mean to pursue higher education in Bangkok or in other cities. The work is ongoing. We are now leading an effort to promote reading and libraries in Lampang and in Thailand.
Nirund Jivasantikarn