Friday, February 03, 2012

Foundations, others discuss ideas for increasing philanthropy in rural America

One of the greatest disparities between rural and urban America is in philanthropy. As you might expect, rural places get the short end of the stick. Recently the Council on Foundations and the Chronicle of Philanthropy held a Twitter chat with representatives from various foundations  and others to discuss the issue.

"Some of the topics discussed were: common goals and interests of rural funders, challenges rural funders are facing, how rural funders identify community, how can rural funders use public policy and public-philanthropy more effectively and whether the resources are available to capture the transfer of wealth opportunity in rural communities," reports the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship of the Rural Policy Research Institute.

"There were a lot of great takeaways for the success of rural philanthropy," Ahmet Binerer of the center reports. "Participants emphasized the importance of youth retention and attraction (this is vital for the future of rural communities), involvement in community meetings (social media can be utilized to get more people involved in community meetings, strengthening connection to place), and success stories (very powerful to get the message across)." The full conversation is archived here.

This is the 6,000th post on The Rural Blog since it migrated to Blogger in 2007.

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