Big financiers bet big on rural America and ‘everyday democracy’

Maybe someone should tell Carlton Turner that he’s committed to saving democracy.

Turner is co-director of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production in the city of Utica, population 600, where his family has lived for eight generations. The organization, better known as Sipp Culture, helps breathe life into a region where schools, grocery stores and factories have closed or left. One project in the works: transforming one of Utica’s oldest buildings into a cultural center and commercial kitchen.

While that may seem like traditional community development, a new philanthropic venture sees Turner as the key to grand ambitions of strengthening democracy. In June, the Trust for Civic Life named Sipp Culture one of 20 inaugural grantees in its effort to revitalize rural, often impoverished cities, counties and tribal areas. The trust, a coalition of 15 grantmakers—most of them leading national funders—sees small, local groups as agents of change—modern versions of the organizations that scholars from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam have identified as a defining feature of American democracy.

The trust announced $8 million in funding, the first installment of what it says will be $50 million in investments over five years. The grantees exemplify what the trust calls “everyday democracy,” as they bring people together to address often fundamental concerns, whether that’s a fading industry, a run-down park or access to quality health care.

“Pragmatic problem solving is the most effective way to build trust and counter polarization,” said Charlie Brown, the trust’s executive director. “Efforts don’t have to be labeled ‘democracy’ or ‘civic’ to contribute to a stronger democracy. And sometimes the more we try to convince people to participate in our democracy and be democratic, the more we alienate them from the process.”

Grantees “never have to see themselves as pro-democracy,” said Sarah Cross, vice president at Stand Together, a trust partner. “They care about the issues that prevent them from feeding their families, educating their children, and having safe and strong communities.”

Bipartisan cooperation

The trust bills itself as a cross-ideological collaboration. It includes many progressive-minded grantmakers and liberal lions such as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. But the Walmart Foundation and Stand Together, the philanthropy of conservative billionaire Charles Koch, are also among its partners.

“There are many, many things we disagree on,” Cross said. But the group, she added, is committed to liberal democracy and wants to address the crisis of despair and isolation. “People are turning to extremist movements and drugs and addiction. These things are tearing families apart and killing people.”

It’s a rare investment by national philanthropy into small groups in rural America. The organizations will receive between $300,000 and $425,000 in general operating support over three years — grants that represent a hefty cash infusion. One recipient, Chinle Planting Hope, a four-year-old volunteer-run organization on the Navajo Nation in Arizona, had revenues of less than $400,000 last year.

In recent decades, major grantmakers have been cutting back on their investments in rural areas. They have been influenced in part by the popular theories of economists such as Richard Florida, whose research pointed to metropolitan areas as economic and creative engines. In the mid-2000s, the Brookings Institution declared America a “metropolitan nation.”

“That did a lot of damage because it fueled the stereotypes that people at foundations had about rural communities,” said Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies.

According to a federal analysis cited by the foundation, 20% of Americans now live in these communities, yet they receive only 7% of the foundation’s funding.

Davis, who advised Trust for Civic Life’s funders, was initially skeptical of the effort. National grantmakers, he noted, come and go. “But this is a pretty fair start.”

The beneficiaries are a far cry from the groups that support many other Democratic-leaning funders. For the better part of a decade, philanthropic dollars have been poured into addressing polarization, hyperpartisanship, and unresponsive governance institutions in Washington, statehouses, and the electoral system.

Reforms to the institutions of democracy, while necessary, are not enough, said Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which led the trust’s creation. Political dysfunction and legislative neglect of everyday concerns have dulled America’s civic spirit and even its hope that things can get better.

“Americans feel like they have no influence, that democracy is overlooked and not delivering for them,” Heintz said. The first recipients, he added, share a mission to renew the sense of agency among people in their communities. “These are remarkable examples of citizens just coming together and saying, ‘We’ve got to fix something.’”

Sipp Culture began working with Utica residents in 2017, bringing them together with architects and designers to create solutions to the region’s challenges. Since then, Utica has established a community farm, a commercial greenhouse, and an artist residency.

“Nobody is coming to do this work for us,” Turner said. “Nobody is coming to save us.”

Another grantee, the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque in Iowa, works in small towns across a seven-county region, helping each town identify and address community needs. “We truly believe that the best people to build our community are the people who live there,” said CEO Nancy Van Milligen.

‘Democracy laboratories’

The trust sees poor parts of the country and areas in transition as laboratories for democracy. It has focused much of its grantmaking on Appalachia, the Black Belt of the South, the Southern Border and the Navajo Nation — places that simply need more philanthropic investment, says Brown, its director. And the likelihood of civic engagement in such areas is much lower than elsewhere, according to research from the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

But these communities are also hotbeds of innovation, Brown says, stripping away old ways of gathering and creating new models.

“You have a group of people who are very entrepreneurial,” Brown added. “They’ve been underfunded, but they’re still finding creative solutions. What does that say about the rest of the country?”

In the western North Carolina city of Morganton, one grantee aims to bring social practices to private industry. Molly Hemstreet and Sara Chester, both locals, founded the Industrial Commons in 2015 to support workers as free trade and the Great Recession battered the textile and furniture industries that are the heart of the region’s economy. The organization helps build community-owned businesses to increase local prosperity and give workers leverage in their companies.

Many of the businesses that closed or moved overseas for cheaper labor were owned by just a few people, Chester said. “We hope that as ownership becomes more widely shared, those decisions will look different, whether that’s 10 years from now or 50 years from now.”

The work may encounter resistance. Some community members will resist the change that the grantees bring, Brown said. Local governments or traditional civic groups may feel threatened. “Some of the resistance we’re going to get is from people who feel like their power structures are changing. And that’s exactly what needs to happen.”

A long-standing local rural grantmaker warned Brown that it’s going to be a mess. “And I think that’s absolutely right.”

______

Drew Lindsay is a senior editor-at-large at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full story . This story was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for its content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.