By Rhys Baker

“Local organizations and leaders understand the problems better than anyone.” said  Neal Patterson, one of the two founders of the Patterson Family Foundation, highlighting the foundation’s beliefs. Neal and his wife Jeanne created the Kansas City, Missouri-based foundation with the mission of “Working together to help rural communities thrive.”

The Patterson Family Foundation has served rural counties across Kansas and Western Missouri since 2007. One of their most extensive programs, the Rural Community Foundation Match Program, is what funds the majority of the upcoming 2024 Clay Center Community Improvement Foundations’ match day. The Pattersons provide up to 70-thousand-dollars in matching funds to qualifying community foundations to stimulate community giving to non-profit charities in rural areas. The foundation aims to increase the number of donors, the quantity of donations, and the average contributions made to community foundations. In 2023, The Patterson Family Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri, gifted 51-point-3 million dollars, 46-million dollars of that funding to rural communities.