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Fulfilling the PromiseRural America and the Audacity of Hope

If there was a single defining theme in the 2008presidential election, it was “the audacity of hope”:the temerity of envisioning a more promising future,even when things seemed bleakest. It was a timelymessage, not simply because it was sorely needed asthe global economic crisis worsened daily, but alsobecause it was so long awaited as Americansincreasingly found themselves divided by falsedichotomies and fears but were nevertheless joinedtogether by hope’s unifying though virtually imper-ceptible thread:

• Hope for greater security against the threat ofterrorism, and also hope for less governmentintrusion by virtually unlimited powers of covertsurveillance in the wake of September 11, 2001

• Hope for greater opportunity of meaningful, livable-wage jobs with benefits, at a time of in-creased corporate outsourcing to other countries,and also hope for extended unemployment bene-fits for those who find themselves suddenly with-out a job

• Hope for less dependence on foreign oil, and alsohope for increasing use of alternative, renewableresource strategies in the face of global warming

• Hope for renewed commitment to individual andcivil rights, at a time when our federal govern-ment and the nation’s courts have championedand upheld legislation to seriously curtail thoserights

The 2008 presidential election called on theAmerican electorate to embrace the audacity ofhope—its seeming unlikeliness and absurdity—when so many of us had become cynical, adoptingan almost fatalistic view of the possibility of thesehoped-for realignments of national and social prior-ities occurring in reality as in our dreams. Many of

us had reached the point of abandoning hope, ithaving become a candle burning low in the darkcave of anxiety, fear, and inevitability, this noxiousmixture threatening to use up the last bit of breath-able air and extinguish hope altogether.

Rural America and the Opportunity for Investment

Rural America also lives in the audacity of hope andhope’s promise of fulfillment. Like the Americanelectorate now awaiting the transition from a hope-ful election to a presidency in which the promise is fulfilled, rural America awaits its own transitionfrom hope to fulfillment of the promise and opportu-nity for a new future. It is a transition foreshadowedin the remarks the former U.S. Ambassador to SouthAfrica, the Hon. James A. Joseph, issued to thefounders of the National Rural Funders Collabora-tive (NRFC) at the beginning of its work seven yearsago. In his remarks, “Rural America: Our CrownJewel,” Ambassador Joseph gave several reasons phi-lanthropy should invest in rural America—not in aromanticized, nostalgic rural America of the past butin a rural America of the present, in which assets andopportunities abound:

There are still two rural Americas—the ruralAmerica of our romantic dreams and the rural America of contemporary reality. I want tospeak today of rural America that is no longerdominated by agriculture or represented by agri-cultural interest groups; the rural America thatincreasingly means not only poor, but diverseminorities; the rural America that is poised andwell-positioned to protect our natural resourcesand provide for our recreation; the ruralAmerica that is badly in need of reinvestmentand nurture [p. 2].

B Y J A M E S A . R I C H A R D S O N J R .

© 2009 Wi ley Per iodicals , Inc .Publ ished onl ine in Wi ley InterScience (www.interscience.wi ley.com)

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The NRFC has worked in the past seven and a halfyears to give voice to rural America’s audacioushope and to invest in the many assets and opportu-nities that lie within. Launched in the first two hun-dred days of the initial term of George W. Bush,NRFC began its early work not with the idea thatprivate philanthropy could on its own bring aboutthe level of investment needed to realize the promiseof rural America as a contemporary reality but thatphilanthropy, in partnership with the public sector,could begin to leverage resources and unlock theassets long held within our country’s rural commu-nities and populations. Indeed, the first few years ofNRFC’s work were filled with hope as promisingrelationships were established with several federalagencies and their regional and state counterparts—notably the U.S. Department of Agriculture, theDepartment of Health and Human Services, and the Appalachian Regional Commission—each withits own interest and commitment in building thisnew private-public partnership for rural America.The promise of a public-private partnership workingdifferently to devote additional resources and newenergy to the fulfillment of rural America’s promisewas one that has remained largely unfulfilled.

Of course, what the Obama presidency cannot do isset back the clock to 2001. Eight years of terrorism,war, financial deregulation, and disinvestment in theinfrastructure and social fabric of American com-munities significantly dimmed whatever bright hopeexisted for rural and urban America alike at thebeginning of this century. The problems now facedby the current administration and the Americanpeople are global in scope and possibly catastrophicin result. The audacity of hope in a post-2008America is considerably larger in ambition, morecautious in its assessment of what can realistically beaccomplished, and longer in its prospect of fulfill-ment. It is a moment in which Dickens’s paradoxicalassessment could not be more apropos: the best oftimes, the worst of times.

Even so, there are truths about rural America as itexists today that are no less compelling now than

eight years earlier. On the one hand, it is just as true(and perhaps more so) that rural America, likeurban America, is marked by increasing diversitybut also by families and communities of color facingpoverty at a disproportionate rate:

Over seven million Americans living in ruralAmerica are poor. While the rural poor are likelyto be white, rural people of color are a dispro-portionate segment of those living in extremepoverty and persistently poor counties. Whitesare 73 percent of the rural population; 11.3 per-cent of rural whites are poor. Combined, com-munities of color only account for 17 percent ofthe total rural population, but they are poor attwo to three times the rate of their white coun-terparts. African American and Latino povertyrates are 34.5 percent and 25.4 percent respec-tively, and the rate for Native Americans is 34percent [p. 8].

On the other hand, it is just as true (and perhapseven more so) that rural America is not the one of anostalgic past or the polarized community of con-servatism, but rather one defined by innovation,effective social institutions and structures, culturaland natural assets, and increasing diversity.

A New Possibility for Public-Private Partnership

Given these differences between America 2001—both urban and rural—and America 2009, it is noless true that the Obama presidency and the new eraof hope it represents offer a unique opportunity torealize and fulfill the dormant promise within ruralcommunities themselves. Realizing this promise will

National Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Fal l 2009

The audacity of hope in a post-2008 America isconsiderably larger in ambition, more cautiousin its assessment of what can realistically be accomplished, and longer in its prospect offulfillment.

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require that the philanthropic and public sectorstake a new look, adopt a fresh perspective—ofthemselves and of one another. To begin with, it willrequire a radical new appreciation of diversity, notsimply the visible diversity of race, nationality, andculture that pervades and enriches our communities(including and especially much of rural America) butalso the less visible though equally important diver-sity of opinion. In recognizing that the world is con-siderably more diverse (even than it was in 2001),philanthropy and the public sector must work todevise new internal decision-making strategies andnew approaches to partnership that begin with andbuild on this diversity rather than merely trying toaccommodate it.

Recognition of increasing diversity will also require anew commitment to innovation in devising planningand funding strategies. This necessitates philan-thropy looking beyond its traditional forms of givingand investment and looking for innovativeapproaches to using and leveraging philanthropicassets, both financial and nonfinancial. For the pub-lic sector, it means moving beyond traditional agencysilos and programmatic requirements for allocationand dispersion of funds and moving toward moregrassroots-based, democratic, and innovative strate-gies for planning and spending of public funds, espe-cially in rural communities where funding is often anafterthought and miserably disproportionate tourban funding.

Realizing the promise also means greater willingnessto demand accountability of one another, but not asadversaries or partisans as much as partners and col-leagues. Within philanthropy, we must ask ourselveswhether we are truly investing in outcomes andachievements rather than merely programs, build-ings, and platitudes. We must hold our results up tothe litmus test of public approval. Philanthropy hastoo long hidden behind the veil of third-party evalu-ation and accountability to trustees and must now

be more willing than ever to hold its work up to thelight of public scrutiny. Likewise, the public sectormust come out from behind the veil of governmentregulations, GAO monitoring, and even congres-sional oversight. These false measures of accounta-bility have been the means more of retaining controlof government spending among the powerful fewwithin the Beltway than of making public dollarsaccessible and flexible to the needs of local regionsand communities—and thereby accountable.

Fulfilling this long-hoped-for promise of renewingthe natural, cultural, social, and human assets ofrural communities will require that philanthropyand the public sector adopt new perspectives, atti-tudes, and directions for their thinking and acting,both for themselves and for one another. If this newadministration of hope and opportunity and whatappears to be a new renaissance within philanthropyregarding how it goes about its work succeeds, thenthe hoped-for promise of building assets and com-munity in rural America, as in urban America, willfind a new level of renewal and fulfillment. In sodoing, we may in fact arrive at not simply a morevibrant, relevant, and equitable rural America butalso a more integrated United States of America inwhich rural and urban are no longer pitted againstone another as rival siblings but rather equally val-ued for the distinctive contributions they each haveto offer.

ReferencesDelgado, G. Zeroing In: Choices and Challenges for theNational Rural Funders Collaborative. Oakland, Calif.:Applied Research Center, July 10, 2005.

Joseph, J. A. “Rural America: Our Crown Jewel.” RuralConnections, Issue 1, August 2001. Retrieved July 29, 2009,from http://www.nrfc.org/redesign/archive_library.asp.

James A. Richardson Jr. is executive director of the NationalRural Funders Collaborative.

National Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Fal l 2009