We launched our New York Rural Organizing Portfolio in June 2024 with an attainable yet impactful goal: raise $15,000 in general operating funds for each of the thirteen organizations featured to support rural organizing that is overlooked by New York City-based funders and the coalitions they support, focusing on New York's rural organizers.

Our ‘why’ was two-fold.

First, leaders of organizations organizing in rural communities told us these were the resources they needed. Through ongoing dialogue, Integrated Rural Strategies Group gained clarity that the work of rural organizers was not only undervalued but also dangerously under-resourced to sustain the implementation of recent progressive wins in New York State.

Second, we recognized the collective power of these organizations and the communities they represent, partnering with them as a cohesive force, despite their significant difference across culture, geography, issue areas of focus and more. And while the majority of philanthropy does not hold these types of groups as a collective, we understand that, as rural Black communities, migrant farm- and service-workers, allies including faith groups, and abolitionists fighting the incarceration of asylum seekers and low-income people transferred from NYC to facilities in rural locations, our rural partners were part of an invisible frontline to preserve multi-racial democracy that too many of our funding peers intentionally neglected to recognize.

As we designed and launched our New York Rural Organizing Portfolio, simultaneously, $7.9 billion in racial justice commitments were rolled back across our sector, according to the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity’s report Mismatched.

Historically, less than 7% of philanthropic funding reaches rural communities.  We envisioned the New York Rural Organizing Portfolio as an accountability mechanism to capture some of the evaporating racial justice commitments with democracy on the line. Instead, a little over a year into its existence, the Portfolio has unlocked new money through partnerships with regional health and community foundations across New York State, stepping up to invest in community organizing to combat the adverse health effects of authoritarianism.

Read the full article about the New York Rural Organizing Portfolio at Neighborhood Funders Group.