About this collection: This special Content Collection provides resources and guidance on rural funding strategies and challenges facing family foundations and other funders seeking to achieve lasting and positive impact in a rural environment.
How does rural philanthropy differ from urban foundation work? The answers lie in both tactics and cultural context. Much urban philanthropy is focused on the development and implementation of large scale best practice models around specific issues – e.g. health, education, early childhood development. These grants are made to large staffed non-profits intended to reach thousands if not tens of thousands of participants. The funders often dictate the specifics of the models and the outcomes. Essentially, the funder is contracting for results.
The best rural philanthropic work is fundamentally different. The emphasis is on the place and not on one specific issue or intervention. This reflects how people live and work in rural communities – often wearing multiple hats concurrently, such as a teacher, pastor, coach and civic committee chairperson. There may not be large well-oiled nonprofits to serve as grantees. Instead, funders look to alternative anchor institution grantees like libraries, community colleges or parks and recreation departments and work closely with smaller non-profits that can do the job but need extra support in order to expand their services and influence. Similarly, the scale of the work is necessarily different. While the numbers might be small, the opportunity to do transformational work is significant given the ability to penetrate deeply into the communities’ various systems and networks.
(Source: Family Funders – Always Important in Rural Communities by Allen Smart)
