Immortalized in the songs of Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Doc Watson, Appalachia is a region of abundant resources. From the coal that powered the industrial revolution to timber and iron ore, Appalachia’s natural resources have played a crucial role in the development of the U.S. Decades of extraction, persistent structural disinvestment and natural disasters, however, have left the region struggling. And one resource the region has always lacked is philanthropic dollars.
A new report from the Appalachia Funders Network seeks to highlight the philanthropic disinvestment in Central Appalachia and calls on funders to increase their support. Formed in 2010, the Appalachia Funders Network (AFN) strives to help Central Appalachia go through a “just transition” from a coal-based economy to one in which everyone can thrive.
AFN is made up of 75 members from across six states, who collectively oversee more than $461 million in annual grantmaking. Members include the Alleghany Foundation, Appalachian Community Fund, Berea College Appalachian Fund, the Greater Clark Foundation, Sugar Bush Foundation, Tazewell Community Foundation, Laughing Gull Foundation, Appalachian Impact Fund, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation and Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.
AFN’s report, “The State of Funding in Appalachia,” was developed by Brad Fulton, associate professor at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and his team at Smart Charity. Building on the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s 2017 “As the South Grows: So Grows the Nation” series, it compares philanthropic funding in the Central Appalachia region with funding in a very different region: the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Some of the data was eye opening… although in some respects, not a total surprise,” said Ryan M. Eller, executive director of the Appalachia Funders Network.
For Eller, the report is more than just a research briefing — it’s a call to action for philanthropy. While the data may not be surprising (and not all of Central Appalachia is rural), it is nevertheless a critical reminder that national grantmakers in particular continue to underfund rural America, a persistent pattern that has contributed, in part, to the urban-rural economic and cultural divides that have also driven people apart politically.
“When we consider Appalachia, it is important in talking about our challenges to also reiterate… the richness in ecological assets, the natural beauty of the place, the brilliance and the grit and the innovative spirit of our people,” Eller said. “Because we may get the misconception that we don’t have capacity, we don’t have assets, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s really just fair access to resources that we lack, and that’s clearly what I think the data shows.”
A stark comparison: funding in the Bay Area vs. Central Appalachia
Despite having roughly similar population sizes — the Bay Area’s population is 7.6 million while Central Appalachia has a population of 9.5 million — the Bay Area has about twice as many foundations as the Central Appalachia region, the report notes. Thirty counties in Central Appalachia have no active foundations and 66 counties have less than $1 per person in philanthropic assets. Many organizations have either no staff members, an intern or someone working part time.
The total assets managed by foundations in the Bay Area are 20 times larger than those managed by foundations in Central Appalachia. During an online event previewing the report, Fulton said, “If you take all of the foundations that are in the San Francisco Bay Area and you took all of their assets and you divvied them up to everyone in the… area, each person in the Bay Area would get nearly $19,000. If you did the same thing in the Central App[alachia] region… each person would get only $700.”
There’s also a significant disparity in nonprofits’ revenues. The total annual revenues of Bay Area nonprofits are twice the total of the revenues in Central Appalachia. The mean grant size for nonprofits in the Bay area is about $100,000; in Central Appalachia, it’s only $23,000. That’s about half the national average, Eller said. And in terms of total grant dollars per person, it’s about $1,000 per person in the Bay Area versus $93 per person in Central Appalachia overall and $77 per person in rural Central Appalachia.
The report not only looked at the funding disparities between the Bay Area and Central Appalachia, but between urban Central Appalachia and rural Central Appalachia, something that hadn’t been done before. Unsurprisingly, rural Central Appalachia receives fewer amounts of grants than urban Central Appalachia. “For too long,” Eller said, “disparities in rural communities have been largely invisible to a lot of folk in national philanthropy.”
Central Appalachia is also more reliant on outside funding than the Bay Area. About 73% of philanthropic funding in the region comes from outside funders, compared to 55% in the Bay Area. Rural Central Appalachia is even more reliant on outside funding compared to the region’s urban areas, with 92% of grant dollars coming from funders outside the region.
That said, about 67% of the grants awarded by foundations in Central Appalachia remain in the area, compared to foundations in the Bay Area, where only 40% of the grants awarded by Bay Area foundations remain.
Why the narrative on Central Appalachia needs to change
The disparities in funding between Central Appalachia and the rest of the U.S. help perpetuate some of the false narratives about the region. “There are a lot of preconceptions about the work that’s going on in Appalachia — that there isn’t a lot of work going on in Appalachia, although we know we have a beautiful constellation of organizations on the ground,” said Jess Mullins Fullen, program and learning administrator for the Appalachia Funders Network. This in turn can discourage funders from investing in the region. “These organizations, as wonderful as they are and the incredible work that they’re doing, they’re still under-resourced, so it just leads me to wonder, what would it look like if they were as resourced as the national average?”
The Hemphill Community Center in Jackhorn, Kentucky, for example, connects community members with services and support, has helped them fight for clean water in their communities, and helps those recovering from substance abuse and addiction with leadership and employment opportunities. It also serves as a bakery. The Industrial Commons in Morganton, North Carolina, works to revitalize the community’s rural economy to be inclusive and supportive of all families.
“We do a lot with what we have. We really climb a mountain,” Mullins Fullen said, “not to use a metaphor that is really tied with our ecology.”
Generations of extraction have left Appalachia with fewer resources and a lack of civic and economic infrastructure to help it transition to a regenerative economy. The wealth generated by the coal industry has long since left the region. Central Appalachia, Eller said, is asking for some of the resources that it has contributed to the U.S. to return.
This is a particularly important time to do so given the disproportionate share of natural disasters the region has endured of late, an opioid epidemic that has devastated communities, economic and political exploitation, and federal cuts that threaten residents’ wellbeing. President Donald Trump’s spending bill would cut Medicaid by more than $800 billion and millions would lose Medicaid. This would disproportionately affect parts of Central Appalachia. Almost half of Eastern Kentucky is on Medicaid, according to Eller.
“I think we in the region have a job to do to shift the narrative about our people and our communities to one that is more true and more honest because many of the most successful, innovative projects, the best comeback stories on the planet… have been born out of Central Appalachia,” Eller said.
He added, “There are also assumptions that are incorrect, that it’s easy to have when you haven’t visited a place, you haven’t tasted the food, you haven’t experienced the art, the culture, and you haven’t heard from local voices, and if you’re not proximate to those communities.”
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
Connecting national funders with local partners in Appalachia
One big reason for the systemic disinvestment in Central Appalachia is that national funders tend to concentrate on the coasts, with places like New York, Los Angeles, and yes, the Bay Area being major hubs for philanthropy. Most national funders are both physically and mentally separate from the Central Appalachia region.
Even those funders who wish to lend their support often don’t quite know how best to do so. National funders have attempted to take the tried-and-true strategies that have worked in urban areas and implement them into Central Appalachia — a phenomenon we’ve seen in rural areas throughout the U.S. But as experts have noted, there is no “one-size-fits-all” strategy that will work everywhere. What works in urban areas won’t necessarily work in rural ones, and what may have been successful in one part of rural America may not work in another rural region.
As such, it is imperative that national funders partner with local funders and connect with community members to better understand how they can best lend their support.
“We have brilliant, amazing intermediaries, local funders [and] local nonprofit partners, and we are always thrilled to introduce national funders to those folks when they’re trying to achieve their goals, whether their goal is improving health outcomes, improving civic life… or just economic development,” Eller said of the Appalachia Funders Network. “I think some of the best projects come when a national funder partners with a local funder and a local intermediary, and we’re able to make that magic happen.”
Eller noted that there are some national funders who have been doing important work in the region. The Trust for Civic Life, for instance, has shown up with humility and invested deeply in communities, he said. The MacArthur Foundation is a lead investor in Press Forward Central Appalachia’s Rural News Fund, which will look at ways to prevent news deserts and revitalize local news across the region. The Mellon Foundation‘s Central Appalachia Living Traditions program invests in communities, supports new folk and traditional art, and honors underrecognized practitioners of the region’s traditions.
Like other struggling regions, Central Appalachia needs funders not only to back individual projects or organizations for a year or two, but to commit to the region and its people over the long term and to help develop civic infrastructure that will last, Eller said.
“We’re here to make it as easy and as absolutely successful as possible for those national partners to have an impact in our region. We’ve got almost 80 members and hundreds of nonprofits ready to walk alongside them in that journey,” Eller said, adding, “I hope the national funders will come to understand that our future as a nation must include places like Appalachia.”
