The National 4-H Council and The Bridgespan Group released a study, “Four Mindsets for Funding Economic Mobility in the Black Rural South,” on August 24 that featured The NEA Foundation’s community schools work in the Deep South. The report features insights and perspectives from more than 80 individuals focused on the Black rural South, including 23 funders, 16 field experts and researchers, 27 nonprofit leaders, and 12 Cooperative Extension staff of historically Black colleges and universities about the urgency for what philanthropy can accomplish if it acts now. It also includes NEA Foundation President and CEO Sara A. Sneed’s reflection about conditions for success: “There are conditions for philanthropic investment that I think have to be understood at the outset, such as that not everything you’re going to pursue is going to succeed, or that you might have to slow the pace, and it has nothing to do with the capabilities of the people who are involved. It has to do with the need to bring in and use resources in ways that haven’t happened before….But that can be done. Bottom line, it can and must be done.”
