Philanthropic funding equity can't exclude rural

Rural communities may be left out of philanthropic funding for increased equity, but they’re precisely where equitable solutions are being created. Maybe philanthropy’s ignoring of rural communities is based on a misunderstanding among funders who concentrate specifically on race equity and assume that rural America is all white. Perhaps they don’t realize that 13 million rural residents are people of color and 2 million are immigrants, or that 54% of Native American and Alaska Native peoples live in rural communities.I have heard too many funders talk about not being able to work in rural places because of “lack of scale” or “poor return on investment” or even more boldly about “throwing money into a dying way of life.” I sometimes wonder: Do foundation leaders hide behind those excuses for strategic reasons? Or is it because they wouldn’t know Allen County, Kansas, from an allen wrench, or the Pine Ridge Reservation from their similarly named country club? America has enough forces trying to deny the value of supporting rural communities without philanthropy piling on.