Georgia Rural Center offers ‘phenomenal’ return on investment

TIFTON — July marked the fifth anniversary of the creation of Georgia’s Center for Rural Prosperity and Innovation. Known as Georgia’s Rural Center and headquartered on the Tifton campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, the center was created by the state’s General Assembly during its 2018 session. The establishing legislation granted the center statewide authority to work with communities and the private sector to promote general welfare, encourage business, and achieve prosperity through innovation and investment in rural communities throughout Georgia.

With a comparatively small annual budget appropriation of just over $1.5 million, Georgia’s Rural Center must leverage funds from other sources — local, state, federal and private — in order to fulfill its purpose.

David Bridges, director of Georgia’s Rural Center, asserts that the center has been leveraging funds during its first five years to serve as a model for other public and nonprofit organizations. As an example, Bridges points to the 52 individual, locally focused projects center staff have initiated, led and seen to completion since 2018.

“Those 52 projects have directly affected rural Georgians in 69 counties throughout this state,” Bridges said. “Add to that our other projects that were regional or statewide in nature, and the center has not only had a statewide impact, but the leverage we’ve been able to create is truly remarkable.”

To accomplish those projects, which include rural workforce development, health care, transportation and more, Georgia’s Rural Center invested $2.4 million, not including personnel and operating expenses. To date, that $2.4 million investment has leveraged $1.5 million in local funds, $7.3 million in additional, non-center, state funds, $78.3 million in federal funds, and $316 million in private funds. In all, the center has worked to secure investments in rural Georgia of more than $405 million since 2018.

Bridges, a native of rural Terrell County in southwest Georgia, calls that a “phenomenal” return on investment.

“In essence, every dollar the center has invested in rural Georgia has been been multiplied by 168,” Bridges says. “Leverage of that magnitude is almost unheard of in the public sector.”

Sparsely populated Taliaferro County in the eastern part of the state is home to one of the Rural Center’s successful efforts. Harrison Poultry, a family-owned, vertically integrated poultry company headquartered in Barrow County, sought the assistance of the Rural Center to determine how to best begin expanding and relocating its operation from now-urbanized Barrow County, roughly an hour east to rural Taliaferro County. Working with Harrison Poultry leaders, the Rural Center positioned the company to access state programs and incentives that made the first phase of expansion and relocation feasible.

According to Bridges, the center’s work is grounded in the belief that the state of Georgia is no more prosperous than its least prosperous community, and in order to prosper, rural communities must be positioned to attract energetic, educated and determined young people to live and work there. Those promising young people are typically drawn to communities where they will have ample opportunity to make a living and access to quality education and healthcare.

“This is why business, education and health care are defining principles for the center’s work and the reason we invest in communities that demonstrate a willingness to prioritize progress in these areas,” Bridges said.

In addition to projects, Georgia’s Rural Center engages in communication and advocacy work on behalf of rural Georgia.

“We shine the light so that others can see what we see,” Bridges said. “And what we see is that real opportunity exists in rural Georgia. It’s time to rediscover that potential and reinvest in the state’s less-populated places.”

Learn more about the Rural Center’s on-going efforts to reinvigorate rural Georgia at www.ruralga.org.

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