Urban Foundations Slow to Respond to Rural Needs

Although a few foundations and charities spread their money to causes outside of urban centers, most nonprofit groups continue to misunderstand the needs of rural areas, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Poverty, high medical costs, and other problems affect rural states as much as densely populated states, but grant makers often neglect less-populous states because they believe those states prefer to be self-sufficient. Moreover, rural states have few of their own foundations, and their isolation prevents people there from making personal connections to charity officials elsewhere.

As a result, the article notes, Montana received just $23 per capita in charitable help in 2005, a quarter of the national average; and while New York and California received billions of dollars in aid, North Dakota and South Dakota each barely topped $3-million. Overall donations to rural causes were $360-million.

Still, the article notes that some foundations — the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation especially — do support rural causes, and a U.S. senator from Montana, Max Baucus, a Democrat, is taking a lead in organizing a symposium later this year on rural giving.

Read The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s coverage of increased aid to rural areas.

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