Giving Compass' Take:

• This OZY article examines how the southernmost U.S. states see a significantly smaller amount of philanthropic funding than the rest of the country (around 44 percent less).

• How can we restore more balance? One way is to remove misperceptions about funding organizations in the South, which includes a fear that institutional racism is still heavily entrenched.

• Here's more on how we can build more trust between foundations and the South.

Rebecca Byrne wants to make a difference. She’s spent the past year and a half developing a hyperlocal philanthropic network in southwest Alabama, leading the creation of a veterans initiative to fund mental health and substance abuse treatments, among other programs. She has also started an initiative called Closing the Opportunity Gap that targets financially fragile families in the eight-county area. Byrne is president and CEO of the Community Foundation of South Alabama, and she’s found that strengthening her relationships with local communities and letting them direct philanthropic efforts is the most effective way to pursue lasting change. “What we have done is what we would love to see national funders [do],” Byrne says.

But Byrne has struggled to secure grants from national philanthropies. Her foundation, which focuses on veterans, addiction and youth development, has received grants in the past — after the 2010 BP oil spill, for example, the foundation got a $4 million grant from Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. But that has changed, and now, Byrne says, the foundation relies on individuals and local businesses for the lion’s share of its funding.

“I don’t know what the secret is to unlock that, to make a shift in that,” Byrne says. “But we have definitely seen that we … just don’t get the national funding.”

What the Community Foundation of South Alabama is experiencing isn’t an isolated case. According to a report published this year by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP):

From 2011 to 2015, the state of New York received $194 per capita per year, while Alabama received $30. Mississippi got $41 but California saw $111. Even less is invested in Southern structural change: 30 cents per person for civic engagement, community organizing, advocacy and policy change for every dollar per person nationally, the report found.

Read the full article about meager funding in the U.S. south by Olivia Miltner at OZY.