Investment in Our Communities

Rural communities need public and private investment, access to philanthropic resources, and the tools to develop their own community-controlled assets.

America cannot fulfill its promise or realize its potential unless it invests more in helping rural communities become healthy and prosperous. These communities, encompassing 80 percent of our land, are home to one fifth of our people. This is the land and these are the people America is relying on to produce the alternative energy and food essential to a sustainable future.

Developing rural communities is difficult work. It requires tackling diverse environments, confronting varied challenges, and seeing and seizing disparate opportunities. In many rural places, this complexity is magnified by significant economic and demographic change, as well as serious environmental challenges. Like many industrial cities in the Midwest and northeast, rural communities are undergoing a fundamental economic transition.

Rural Americans have the tenacity and creativity needed to succeed right now. There are more than 3,000 nonprofit community developers, plus thousands of local governments and uncounted businesses, institutions, and residents at work right now developing or redeveloping their rural communities. They know what it takes, demonstrating this fact with many important but unsung development breakthroughs.

What rural people and communities need is real attention and support from the nation’s policymakers. They need recognition of how much rural people and resources contribute to the nation’s economic and environmental health, and a commitment to invest a fair share of the nation’s investment capital and philanthropic resources in rural America.

See Policy Recommendations for Investment in Our Communities.