Rural Nonprofits Face Funding Gap, Report Finds

July 23, 2009 — Rural nonprofits are lagging their urban counterparts in funding from federal government, private foundations, and corporations and are less able to help disadvantaged residents in their communities, a new report from the Bridgespan Group finds.

Funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies, the report, Nonprofits in Rural America: Overcoming the Resource Gap (23 pages, PDF), examined the funding structure of rural nonprofits in California and New Mexico and found that the organizations were disproportionately smaller than their urban counterparts. Because most of the nonprofits were unable to amass assets of more than $1 million, the groups did not have the resources needed to build strong organizations and fully serve the needs of their communities.