Brief #3: Community Economic Development Organizations, Geography & Financial Resources

Community Economic Development Organizations, Geography & Financial Resources is the third brief in the Money Meet Communities series. It analyzes how resources and community economic development organizations are distributed across the United States. 

This brief answers a few basic questions: 

• How are different kinds of community economic development groups distributed across U.S. regions and between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas?
• Do some regions appear more hospitable to community economic development groups than others when you look at the numbers of groups, revenue flows, government grant support, and total assets?
• Are urban areas more favorable to community economic development group funding than rural areas?

Our goal is to use research data to identify opportunities for the community economic development field. This brief has five key findings:

Community economic development groups are most prevalent in the Northeast and less so in the South, relative to each region’s share of the national total of people living in poverty.

Total revenues, government support, and assets are proportional to the number of community economic development groups in each region.

Non-metropolitan area group spending matches the non-metro share of national poverty population.

Non-metropolitan groups have fewer assets but more government support, relative to their share of the national total of people living in poverty.

The rural community economic development sector is substantially more reliant on social services agencies than urban areas.

The second brief in the series, Tracing Community Economic Development Funding Flows, examines the funding infrastructure for community economic development groups.

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