Amazing: As philanthropic giving in the U.S. expanded, it shrank in rural America!

Comprehensive information on rural philanthropy is scant, but data from the The Foundation Center suggest that rural philanthropy is getting weaker, not stronger. The center's online database shows that domestic "rural development . . . did not fare well in foundation grant portfolios in 2004-08," Rick Cohen writes for the Daily Yonder. "During that span annual foundation grants for rural development declined from $92.7 million in 2004 to $89.5 million in 2008." While rural development grants was declining by 3.45 percent, the total annual foundation grantmaking increased 43.4 percent! (Yonder chart of rural development grants)

As possible reasons for the decline, Cohen points to the lack of a clear advocate for rural philanthropy, the "metronation" focus of philanthropy that carries a bias against rural areas. While the 3.45 percent deficit might disappear if grantmakers fully report their 2008 grants, "Rural development grants definitely will not show increases anywhere close to the level of growth seen in total foundation grantmaking," Cohen writes. The statistics grow even more bleak for rural communities when one considers that "the grants marked 'rural development' are not likely to have been spent entirely on rural projects," Cohen reports.

In 2006 Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, urged institutional philanthropy to double its commitment to rural communities in a five-year period, and foundations held a meeting about it, but Baucus doesn't seem to have followed up and the foundations have failed to follow through on promises to meet that goal with actual funding, Cohen reports.

"Rather than turning to the foundations that control well above a half trillion in tax-exempt endowments to put a dollop more toward rural, the Council on Foundations chose to encourage rural areas to look to their local wealth to develop new sources of philanthropy, typically community foundations," Cohen writes. "This strategy is slow, slow, slow, and poses other problems.  One is that not all rural areas are well enough endowed with wealth to be tapped for philanthropy; developing new rural philanthropic resources is demonstrably easier and more lucrative in richer rural areas than in poorer ones. The other is that the “transfer of wealth” between generations, which some theorists predicted would bring about a major infusion into philanthropy, has not come to pass, especially since so much transferable wealth simply evaporated during the recession."
Cohen concludes, "There’s always lip service, heartfelt statements about how much foundations care about rural communities, but something is missing year after year—dollars. . . . There are heroes and heroines in U.S. philanthropy for whom rural America is undoubtedly grateful," but concludes that the "challenge remains as immense as ever." (Read more)