Vying for Funding, Rural Counties Often Lose to Big Cities But Here’s a Change – The America’s Best Communities contest

The America’s Best Communities contest http://americasbestcommunities.com/ is a chance for rural counties, which often fail to beat out larger, urban areas for federal development funding, to win up to $3 million to realize economic development plans. Frontier Communications http://west.frontier.com/mt , the Dish Network and CoBank fund the contest.

Rural areas , which tend to have a higher percentage of people living in poverty than metropolitan ares (18 percent to 15 percent, respectively, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture) can’t always count on the federal government to help them realize many of their development goals.

by Mary Ellen McIntire

Full Story: http://www.governing.com/topics/finance/gov-how-rural-communities-can-compete-for-development-cash.html