Major funders bet big on rural America and ‘everyday democracy’

Someone may need to tell Carlton Turner that he’s working to save democracy.

Turner is co-director of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production in the town of Utica, population 600, where his family has lived for eight generations. The organization, better known as Sipp Culture, is helping breathe life into a region that’s seen schools, grocery stores, and factories shutter or leave. A project in the works: transformation of one of Utica’s oldest buildings into a cultural center and commercial kitchen.

While that may seem like traditional community development, a new philanthropic venture sees Turner as key to grand ambitions to shore up democracy. In June, the Trust for Civic Life named Sipp Culture one of 20 inaugural grantees in its bid to reinvigorate rural, often high-poverty towns, regions, and tribal areas. A collaborative of 15 grantmakers — most of them high-profile national funders — the trust sees small, local groups as instruments of change — modern versions of the organizations that scholars from Alexis de Tocqueville to Robert Putnam have singled out as a distinguishing feature of American democracy.

The trust announced $8 million in funding, the first installment of what it says will be investments of $50 million over five years. Grantees exemplify what the trust calls “everyday democracy” as they bring people together to address often-fundamental concerns, whether that’s a fading industry, a dilapidated park, or access to quality health care.

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