Donors Can Help Opportunity Take Root

Philanthropy often funds programs to help people move up, like scholarships, tutoring, job training, youth development, mentoring, college access, entrepreneurship, and community revitalization. Much of this work is valuable.

But a new Gallup / Walton Family Foundation report, How Opportunity Takes Root, suggests that donors should widen the lens. Opportunity doesn’t depend only on programs but on whether communities create the conditions that allow people to shape their own lives.

The report finds that two-thirds of Americans feel they can mostly determine their own path, even when things are difficult. But one-third feel mostly compelled by circumstances beyond their control. This agency gap has enormous consequences. Adults who feel in control are more than twice as likely to thrive as those who feel pushed by circumstances, 63% compared with 25%, respectively.

For donors, the message is clear. Funding isolated interventions isn’t sufficient to help people in need. Instead, donors must invest in the local conditions that make personal agency possible, allowing residents to solve problems at a local level.

The report identifies several such local conditions. People are more likely to feel agency when they live in communities with stable jobs, affordable housing, the ability to live near work, supportive neighbors, and leaders who listen. Adults who say their communities offer stable jobs and affordable housing are fourteen to eighteen percentage points more likely to say they can shape their own path.

This is familiar territory for effective local philanthropy. Donors know that a scholarship may fail if a student has no transportation to and from school. Job training may fail if employers are not engaged with their employees. Mentoring loses impact if it is not connected to real opportunities. A youth program may inspire ambition but can still leave a young person without a map from school to work. A neighborhood initiative may improve services without increasing residents’ voices.

These failures don’t stem from a lack of funding or effort. They’re the result of an absence of the relationships and institutions that allow programs to connect and stick.

This comes from a fundamental disregard for the importance of social wealth, i.e., the stock of relationships, institutions, habits, and networks that help people build stable lives. It includes trusted adults, mentors, teachers, coaches, employers, faith communities, neighborhood groups, civic associations, community colleges, and local nonprofits. These are not optional “nice to have” bonuses. They are opportunity infrastructure.

In a 2022 research summary, economist Raj Chetty and colleagues drew on data from tens of millions of Americans and found that economic connectedness, the degree to which people have cross-class friendships, is among the strongest predictors of upward mobility. Communities with more cross-class relationships produce significantly better economic outcomes for low-income residents. Social wealth, in other words, isn’t an abstraction. It can be a very concrete catalyst for whether people rise.

The report also highlights another lesson for philanthropy: people want a voice, not just help. Nearly three-quarters of adults say their community is worth investing in. Yet 61% don’t trust local leaders to act in the community’s best interest, and 66% aren’t confident their ideas for improving the community will be heard. When residents believe leaders will take their ideas seriously, they are about twice as likely to feel responsibility and motivation to give back.

That should challenge and direct donors. Too often, philanthropy asks what communities need without listening to residents’ answers. The result can be well-funded work that’s smart on paper but ineffective in practice. People closest to the problem can best describe which barriers matter most. Is it childcare, transportation, scheduling, distrust, confusing eligibility rules, lack of mentors, weak employer connections, or programs that do not lead to real jobs?

Donors can help by funding institutions and partnerships that enable people to move from aspiration to action, such as career-connected high schools, community college workforce programs, apprenticeships, neighborhood-based mentoring, local journalism, civic engagement, trusted intermediaries, employer collaboratives, and public spaces where people actually meet.

This doesn’t mean abandoning measurable outcomes. To the contrary, it means being more honest about what measures actually show what matters. A donor should still ask whether students graduate, workers earn more, or families become more stable. But donors should also ask whether residents gained trusted relationships, clearer pathways, stronger networks, and more voice in shaping local decisions.

The best philanthropy delivers opportunities and helps communities grow the roots that allow opportunity to last.

Here are six recommendations for what donors can do to advance lasting local opportunity:

• Fund opportunity maps, not just programs. Support local efforts that show residents the connections among schools, credentials, jobs, wages, apprenticeships, and support services. People can’t pursue pathways they don’t see.
• Invest in social wealth. Fund mentoring, advising, peer cohorts, alumni networks, employer relationships, and neighborhood institutions that help people stay connected. These are the relationships that transform programs into real opportunity.
• Back community colleges and local intermediaries that serve as mobility hubs. Community colleges are well positioned to connect education, workforce development, employers, and adult learners. Donors can help build clearer pathways and stronger navigation supports and fund the intermediary organizations that link schools, employers, nonprofits, and families.
• Support apprenticeships and earn-and-learn models. These programs combine income, skills, experience, and relationships, the four building blocks of real opportunity. They’re especially valuable for young people who need a foothold before they can climb.
• Include resident voices. Design grants so that students, workers, parents, and community members have meaningful input into the work that’s supposed to benefit them. The report makes clear that when people believe their ideas are heard, they’re far more likely to invest in their communities in return.
• Measure agency and connection. In addition to counting enrollment and completion, ask whether people gained confidence, trusted relationships, clearer information, and concrete next steps. Outcomes that matter most are often the ones philanthropy tracks least.

The Gallup / Walton Family Foundation report is, fundamentally, a reminder that opportunity is not a product philanthropy can deliver. It’s a condition that communities must develop. Donors who understand that distinction and invest accordingly will do more than fund good programs. They will help build the soil in which opportunity takes root.

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