Building the Ship to Sail: Now Is the Time for Rural Philanthropy to Collaborate to Win

“A giant wave is coming, it’s going to crash, and we’re not ready for it.” For more than a year, I’ve heard versions of this statement everywhere, from small, county-level gatherings to national rural development convenings. Hundreds of federal funding programs stemming from the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the Chips and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act are surging billions of new dollars toward rural and tribal infrastructure and innovation initiatives.

After decades of disinvestment, resource-starved rural places need infusions of new capital. But the federal funding wave is coming fast, and it will overwhelm rural resource deserts suffering from chronic, generation-spanning investment droughts. Rural communities and regions are unprepared, lacking the capacity to navigate federal funding opportunities and the technical expertise and resources to develop viable applications.

As the wave approaches, rural leaders recognize the emergency and are scrambling to catch up, grabbing any bucket they can find, hoping to catch some funding when the wave eventually crashes. The federal government, civil society and place-based philanthropies see the predicament and are trying to help. Yet there’s a pervading sense that what we’re doing is hasty and inadequate; too little, too late. Ad hoc tactical fixes are no match for systems-level disconnects that have been decades in the making. As the wave of resources approach, rural areas are again left building the ship as it sails.

But why do rural places always have to settle for makeshift life rafts when they have always needed proper vessels to navigate the choppy waters of globalization, technological innovation and demographic change? Why hasn’t philanthropy led the charge in building the civic infrastructure and collaborative mechanisms communities need to take advantage of current rural investment opportunities? Did leading philanthropists know 10 years ago what we know now?

It turns out, yes. For more than a decade, leaders in philanthropy have understood the need for a new rural model to strengthen rural capacity. Warnings and recommendations about the role of philanthropy in rural development have not changed much over time, and it starts with neglect. Former Rural Community Assistance Corporation board member Kirke Wilson wrote back in 2010 that the “past neglect of rural organizations by private philanthropy contributes to future neglect.”

The trend against rural, philanthropy’s rural blind spot, is not new and remains stubborn today. It’s often hard to grasp the scale of differences in philanthropic giving, with metro areas’ per capita grantmaking measured in the thousands of dollars while rural regions are in the tens of dollars. When rural people have access to 1% of the philanthropic support as some metro populations, there’s obviously a systemic failure that creates dilemmas and forces tough choices among those philanthropies that continue investing in rural places. Considering that rural places have suffered from philanthropic neglect for decades, what are the options? Either scale back goals or invest in community capacity, with that investment going beyond any one particular initiative.

There are no million-dollar solutions to billion-dollar challenges, and philanthropic capital alone is inadequate to address the gaps. Whether it’s broadband connectivity, healthcare access, viable water and wastewater systems, transportation options, entrepreneurship ecosystems, or available child care, philanthropies focused on rural development must move beyond funding the thing and invest in the capacity of the systems that do the things. So what must be in place to build the capacity of rural systems?

Rural philanthropy must work collaboratively to empower rural communities, and transformation will require dynamic public-private partnerships. The lessons learned at the conclusion of the 10-year National Rural Funders Collaborative in 2012 emphasize the ultimate partnership for rural transformation, a “tri-party collaboration of practitioners, philanthropy and the public sector.” As the once-in-a-generation federal funding wave crests, rural places are desperate for these robust rural development triangles where philanthropy, multisectoral intermediaries and federal and state agencies interact, coordinate and layer technical assistance and investments. These rural development triangles should integrate what each partner does best:

Philanthropy invests in flexible, persistent capacity-building support for intermediaries that fill the missing middle between bottom-up, community-driven development and top-down federal and state funding applications and allocations. Philanthropy finds ways to leverage its limited capital through matching resources that are a barrier for distressed rural places. There’s simply too little rural philanthropy not to prioritize co-investments and pooled funds at every opportunity.
High-capacity multisectoral practitioners and intermediaries provide local coordination and planning support and targeted technical assistance for staffing and expertise-constrained rural organizations.
Federal and state agencies use the community capacity-building efforts of rural philanthropy and the embedded engagement of intermediaries to better focus and de-risk large-scale infrastructure investments and sustain and scale rural coalition-building.

The contributions and impacts of these rural development triangles will be mutually reinforcing and dynamic, opening new potential pathways and platforms to direct rural investments. Yet who should take the lead in creating rural development triangles, and how?

“Looking to the future, regional community and family foundations, and their partners and allies, must take the lead — as they historically have — in funding rural areas and rural-urban regions. But rather than having a national group of funders frame the value proposition, each regional collaboration must frame the value proposition and terms of engagement for national funders to follow and become engaged; not vice versa. Smaller collaborations, both regionally focused and issue-based, working together to bring about and fund regional change, are the likely successors to and champions of an unfinished agenda.” James A. Richardson, Jr., Allison Van, and John Haffner, 2012
“This will entail deliberate and long-term commitments to building networks among rural organizations and the intermediary organizations that serve them while challenging misperceptions, stereotypes and other obstacles to rural philanthropy.” Kirke Wilson, 2010

There is a special role and obligation for rural-serving, place-based philanthropy to organize and catalyze new co-funding and collaboration models and investible platforms at the regional, state and national levels. Led by regional, place-based foundations, rural development triangles are being built now across the country, from the Pacific Northwest to central Appalachia and East Texas. National foundations can play a role, as well, co-investing with place-based rural foundations and stepping forward for rural regions that have no existing local foundation presence.

High-capacity intermediaries focused on rural development are emerging and expanding. They include:

Community development financial institutions with inclusive community financing mechanisms and new coalitions, like Partners for Rural Transformation, concentrated on ending rural persistent poverty
Networks of technical assistance partners with essential infrastructure expertise, like the Rural Community Assistance Partnership and Rural LISC, advancing strategies and stretching their services to meet the moment
Innovative programs, like the Economic Recovery Corps and the American Connection Corps, that are connecting overstressed and under-resourced rural communities with dynamic changemakers

The third point in the triangle — the public sector — is responding, as well. Federal, state and regional partners, including USDA’s Rural Partners Network, EPA, DOT and DOE, are directly engaged in capacity-building. The Appalachia Regional Commission and the Richmond Fed are launching multistate capacity-building initiatives to boost rural development.

What we need now is an emphasis on all points of the rural development triangle interacting, aligning, layering and reinforcing one another in the same places, within the same rural regions. Regional rural-focused philanthropy, technical assistance intermediaries and the public sector must work together to flesh out the collaborative structures and technologies, decision-making processes, measurement tools and communications that will strengthen and sustain rural development triangles.

The wave is coming, and too many rural places — as well as philanthropic funders, technical assistance partners and federal agencies — are currently overwhelmed and unprepared, as they have been for decades. As a result, there will be challenges unaddressed, opportunities missed and communities left behind. However, ships are being built, and if we can use this moment to catalyze, accelerate and sustain emerging regional rural ecosystems, then this can become a transformational moment for historically underserved rural and tribal places. Let’s look to the lessons of the past, finish building, and ride this wave to a better future.

Jerry Neal Kenney is program officer for Regional Capacity Building and Community Development with the T.L.L. Temple Foundation.

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