ABSTRACT
Philanthropy can be helpful, but relatively little is directed to serving the needs of older people in rural areas: only 7% of American philanthropy is dedicated to rural issues of any type and less than 2% targets any category of aging. The Rural Philanthropy Analysis Project at Campbell University, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, completed the first comprehensive analysis of rural private funders. For those looking for resources, focusing exclusively on “rural aging” is unlikely to be successful because so few funders support this area, resulting in what is likely to be an extremely limited pool of potential funders. In addition, given the limited resources in rural areas generally, it is unlikely that most communities will be able to develop elderly-only programs. Philanthropy has always been involved in rural communities and continues to do so, but as rural areas become older, their role needs to dramatically increase.
