About the Rural Funders Working Group

Our Mission

The mission of the Rural Funders Working Group is to increase the awareness of funding needs in rural communities and to foster greater involvement and partnership efforts in responding to the needs of rural communities.

We seek to carry out our mission by means of, though not limited to, the following activities:

Facilitating dialogue among regional and national foundations, corporations, government agencies and non-profit intermediaries;
Promoting greater attention to rural issue and rural communities within the Council on Foundations;
Interacting and forming strategic alliances with other COF affinity groups on rural issues and needs; and
Providing periodic information to our members and others about rural needs and important rural partnerships.

Our History

The Rural Funders Working Group was launched at a breakfast roundtable at the 1998 Council on Foundations (COF) meeting in Washington, D.C. We discovered that many funders shared out interest in ongoing dialogue about increasing awareness of needs in rural communities and effectively channeling institutional resources to meet needs in rural areas.

Soon after that meeting, a small ad-hoc group set about exploring whether we should form a rural affinity group and whether program sessions on rural issues might be included on the agenda for this year's COF meeting. Rather than set up an independent affinity group, we decided to approach the Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG), a recognized affinity group of the Council on Foundations, to see if we could establish ourselves as a working group of NFG.

The NFG Board of Directors approved the Rural Funders as a recognized Working Group in February, 1999. Membership is open to corporate, community, family, private, public, and religious foundations, government agencies and intermediaries who are interested in rural issues and rural communities. Currently there are no membership fees. You do not need to be a member of NFG to participate in the Rural Funders Working Group. However, we encourage you to join NFG because of the support that NFG is giving to our efforts.

Our Leadership

Teri Yeager, William Randolph Hearst Foundation and Mary Hunt-Lieving, Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, serve as co-chairs of the working group. They meet regularly with a steering committee of folks who have been very interested in expanding philanthropic commitment to rural areas.

Steering Committee

Sharon Baranofsky, Rural LISC
Joe Belden, Housing Assistance Council
Leslie Boney, MDC, Inc.
Samin Dadelahi, Wyoming Community Foundation
Rick Foster, W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Linetta Gilbert, Ford Foundation
Mary Hunt-Lieving, Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, co-chair
Susan Jenkins, Cherokee Preservation Foundation, co-chair
Diane Kaplan, Rasmuson Foundation
Lynn McGee, Foundation for the Mid South
Alan McGregor, Southern Rural Development Initiative
June Otow, Rural Community Assistance Corporation
Peter Pennekamp, Humboldt Area Foundation
Chris Perez, F.B. Heron Foundation
Carla Roberts, Arizona Community Foundation
Miriam Shark, Annie E. Casey Foundation
Bob Stark, New Mexico Community Foundation
Gayle Williams, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation
Teri Yeager, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, co-chair

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