Holly Hanes, SAFSF Senior Membership Associate, shares her reflections from attending the United Philanthropy Forum’s UnConference as an Emerging Leader scholarship recipient. She participated in a transformative session discussing the newly released 10 Principles of Rural Philanthropic Engagement, which provides critical framing for funders seeking to deepen their work with rural communities.
This year, I had the pleasure of joining colleagues at United Philanthropy Forum’s UnConference as an Emerging Leader scholarship recipient. United Philanthropy Forum is the umbrella membership organization for Philanthropy Infrastructure Organization (PIO), also known as funder networks or affinity groups. This year’s conference was unique in structure – fully peer-driven and peer-led – featuring sessions that harnessed the collective expertise, wisdom, and breadth of the network.
Most relevant to our work at Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF) was a deep dive into Rural Philanthropy, elevated by The Forum’s recent release of the 10 Principles for Rural Philanthropic Engagement, developed to provide framing for PIOs and funders seeking to begin and/or deepen their engagement with rural communities.
EXPLORING RURAL PHILANTHROPY: PRINCIPLES, PRACTICE, AND IMPACT
As someone who grew up in and lives, eats, and breathes rural, I take pride in the rural communities I have called home, and witness the misconceptions, stereotypes, and lack of funding play out daily. Funders and media often look at rural communities as homogeneous, which couldn’t be further from the truth!
Held at the Colorado Health Foundation, the off-site session opened with a discussion on the realities of rural philanthropy, before leading into a panel discussion with those actively investing in rural Colorado:
What followed was an intentional deep dive into Ten Principles for Rural Philanthropic Engagement, developed by the Forum’s Rural Equity Working Group with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Why does rural matter? I’ve long championed that a mere five-digit zip code should not determine your ability or opportunity. The value of someone’s life should not be classified based on rurality. We see this narrative often in the aftermath of natural disasters–most recently Hurricane Helene– with off-handed comments praising that a disaster did not happen in the urban center or a larger city. Rural communities are valuable, as is, and the collective of its people, places, and perspectives matter.
From the lens of a national membership organization, our work at SAFSF, mobilizing funders in support of just and sustainable food and agriculture systems, would not exist without rural communities. Rural issues in the food and agriculture context, including changing demographics, poverty, immigration and labor issues, small and mid-size producers, and regional food infrastructure – many of our challenges and opportunities are invisibilized in discussions about our food system.
Every urban center is reliant upon its rural neighbors…it’s an interdependency that is impossible to untangle, amplified by a global food system. No place starts as urban, and all locales have rural history. On a larger scale, every state has a rural community, and we are only as strong as our weakest neighbor.
Elevate Local Voices, the first principle of the 10 Principles for Rural Philanthropic Engagement, strives to listen, learn, and unlearn from authentic rural leaders, particularly from Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, as well as other under- or unrepresented groups, and those with local lived rural experience.
I have heard it said that capital is like water…it flows most easily where it has flowed before. Rural communities are often discounted, left out, and ‘othered,’ forgotten in traditional resource allocation: only 7 percent of private philanthropic investments are associated with rural-focused initiatives, yet 20 percent of the U.S. population is classified as rural. According to the Center on Rural Innovation’s map on private rural investment, despite making up 12 percent of all U.S. businesses, rural businesses receive less than 1 percent of venture capital.
Defining rural matters: it defines who is in, who is out, and who is receiving funding. This funding (or a lack thereof) has significant potential to impact a community. It’s often the difference between a company staying or going, a hospital thriving or shutting down, a school system retaining teachers or struggling to keep the lights on, of opportunity or scarcity; all of which I saw in my own rural community. In the context of our work, people often view rural only through the lens of agriculture and only agriculture, when rural is much more than one single industry.
The federal definition of rural versus the community definition of rural vary greatly, and fail to account for nuance. In fact, many federal rural definitions contradict each other.
SAFSF Members Leading the Way
Two current SAFSF members are featured in the report as “Principles in Action” case stories, embodying best practices of funders doing this work.
The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation
An SAFSF member since 2025, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation has distributed grants totaling more than $3 billion across six priority communities: Baltimore, Israel, New York City, northeastern Pennsylvania, San Francisco, and Hawaii. The Foundation embarked on a comprehensive listening tour and reflection process with insights from 38 interviews to refine the Foundation’s approach to rural investment.
In 2021, the Foundation launched an initiative focused on community development financial institutions (CDFIs), as an avenue to build financial capacity for rural households to qualify for rental and homeownership opportunities and to bolster local capacity to harness federal funding.
The Northwest Area Foundation
An SAFSF member for nearly a decade, The Northwest Area Foundation serves eight states and 76 Tribal nations, a region shaped by the Great Northern Railway. 40 percent of the Foundation’s grantmaking is dedicated to Native-led organizations.
Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF), a nonprofit organization that works to protect and promote the rights of Native peoples to own and manage their ancestral lands, was seeded by a $20 million grant from the Northwest Area Foundation, one of the largest grants ever made to a Native American-controlled organization at the time.
Four key concepts that strengthen the Foundation’s grantmaking for Native communities are: (1) collaboration is key, (2) grantees inform us, (3) culturally anchored models work, and (4) systems change is grounded in justice. One of the most important dynamics at play in tribal nations is the importance of showing up and taking the time to get to know the community – echoed in Principle 6: Respect Native Sovereignty When Working In Tribal Areas.
To build rural, we have to build from within – here are my takeaways on effective rural philanthropy.
Funder Takeaways on Effective Rural Philanthropy:
- Shift advocacy from federal to regional, state, and local organizing and advocacy capacity-building.
- Respond now, given the landscape of federal funding possibly not returning, to maintain trust built in rural communities. This applies to PIOs, to their members, and to funders in the community.
- Reorganize your budget to prioritize being there – this work does not happen behind a laptop or in an office. If you are working with rural communities, consider how your organization can allocate budgets to ensure consistent, long-term community presence and engagement.
- Flip the accountability script. Traditionally, foundation accountability is limited to their trustees and the IRS. Be a funder that acts in accountability to the community and recognizes that the money is not your own.
- Lead with non-grant capital (‘you are a human with access to capital’) and seek to make connections with non-traditional leaders.
Rural America is struggling – where is philanthropy? Read this piece from the Chronicle of Philanthropy for success stories and ways to hold philanthropy accountable. Rural communities matter, rural people matter, and rural funding matters.