A Conversation with PhilanthropywoRx’s Allen Smart (Part 1 of 2)

From and through PhilathropywoRx, the consulting firm he founded, Allen Smart brings attention to and helps grantmakers and those who serve them think better about and practice rural philanthropy. He and the firm also help nonprofit groups implement philanthropically supported rural projects. The firm name’s capitalized “R” stand for rural.

Smart directed a project on rural philanthropy at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C., that was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. At the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, he served as interim president and vice president, and he directed its health-care division. As well, he’s been vice president of programs at The Rapides Foundation, director of community development for a Midwestern Catholic hospital, and grants administrator for the City of Santa Monica, Calif.

Smart was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation last week. The just less than 20-minute video below is the first part of our discussion; the second is here. In the first part, we talk about rural philanthropy’s size and scope, its nature, and the benefits of and challenges to doing it well.

“The number you always see” to quantify the portion of philanthropy going to rural areas is about seven percent, Smart tells me, which is then usually compared to the about 20% of the population that lives in rural areas. “My guess is, contrary to some of the opinions of people whom I talk with, is” that it’s “actually larger than the seven percent.” The comparison is often used “to make a case that rural communities are underfunded by philanthropy, which I’m sure is true, but I’m not sure it’s to the degree that we talk about it.”

National foundations should consider rural grantmaking for many reasons, including “the ability to create impact in a way that is both quicker and probably more fundamental, given the smaller populations,” according to Smart. “It’s really a tremendous place to do good, test out ideas, evaluate concepts, and really create some fundamental change in places that, just given the scale of cities, you can’t” do otherwise.

“I think we can safely say that in places that have a shortage, for all sorts of reasons, of well-funded high-performing nonprofit organizations that often religious communities, whether it be church-based or something a little more ecumenical, are absolutely critical stakeholders” in rural areas, he later notes.

National grantmakers too often take the risk of having “a relationship might be with one nonprofit in a rural place, and that one nonprofit may or may not represent the interests of the county as a whole,” Smart says.

To givers, he recommends “really understanding what those successful models look like in smaller places—where there are fewer nonprofits, where the role of schools or local government is stronger” and “asking perhaps better questions or to try to get at if X nonprofit is really working closely with others outside of their sphere of influence.”

In the conversation’s second part, Smart further discusses some of the benefits and challenges of rural grantmaking, including the growing role of intermediaries and the proper, localist sense of place in it.

This article first appeared in the Giving Review on August 19, 2024.