Stories

Environment/Energy

Latino Community Fund-Georgia

Celebrating 2020 (Yes, Really)

We are in an era of transition, opportunity and hope. A new federal administration is beginning to address the atrocities and negligence of the previous one. Two new senators...

The Fierce Urgency of Now

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Riverside Church, 1967

If there is any...

MRBF Joins Supreme Court Amicus Brief about Census

A fair, thorough and accurate census count is vital to nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives. The Constitution requires the federal government to count every member of the population every ten...

  • CEO Justin Maxson leaving MRBF

    With deep gratitude for his six years of dedication and service, the board and staff of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation announce the departure of CEO Justin Maxson, who has accepted the position of USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Rural Development in the Biden-Harris Administration....

  • Using All Our Tools to Advance Equity in the South and Beyond

    While potential is universal, opportunity is not. In the American South, where the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation works, slavery, segregation and a host of laws, policies and practices have entrenched white supremacy, delivering enormous advantages to whites and pervasive disadvantages to people of color....

  • Reasons to celebrate 2018

    We won’t sugarcoat it: 2018 was a tough year. The words of abolitionist Frederick Douglass frequently came to mind: “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never...

    Project South

  • Congratulations to our New and Returning Grantee Partners

    Congratulations to our new and returning grantee partners who received funding in June 2018:

    Advocates for Community and Rural Education dba Rural Community Alliance

    Appalachia Funders Network

    Appalachian Citizens' Law Center

    Blueprint NC

    Coalfield Development Corporation

    CommunityWorks

    Homes of Hope, Inc.

    ...

  • A Proven Way to Battle Rural America’s Poverty

    This originally appeared as an op-ed in the Chronicle of Philanthropy on July 11, 2018.

    A county in Mississippi with a 28 percent poverty rate is about to boast the state’s first and only year-round, fully accessible camp for disabled children and adults. A rural county in South Carolina will soon have a dedicated high school to prepare students for health careers...