With all of the talk in recent months from activist groups like Greenlining and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy about how charitable foundations need to devote more of their resources to urban areas and racial minorities, observers may have forgotten how much of American poverty is white and rural.
Earlier this month, the Council on Foundations, a national association for philanthropic organizations, attempted to chart a progressive course aimed at combating problems facing rural America. It hosted a three-day conference at Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library, which sits only a short distance from the Mississippi River Delta, home to some of the country’s most abject poverty.
According to a new report from The Bridgespan Group, which analyzed grant-making in 2006 by the top 1,000 foundations, grants to rural America accounted for only 6.8% of overall giving even though 17% of the nation’s population is rural and 28% of that rural population lives in poverty. A 2003 analysis of poverty by U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that of the 14.2% rural Americans who lived in poverty, 11.3% were white, 30.5% were black, 25.4% were Hispanic and 19.5% were classified as belonging some other ethnic group. With respect to corporate gifts, only 1.4% of the 11,000 grants made by 124 Fortune 500 companies in 2000 went to rural organizations.
I am glad to see this. Sometimes I think rural America is in danger of being totally forgotten. When my small town was hit by a tornado earlier this year, it didn’t make any daily newspaper in the state, despite the extensive damage that was done. It was like we didn’t exist.