How Philanthropy Can Help Communities Reach Their Broadband Goals

For community leaders striving for digital equity, I am happy to share Pathways to Digital Equity, a guidebook to help communities evaluate and meet specific connectivity needs. My colleague Robbie McBeath charts three pathways—Access, Adoption, and Use—that together offer a comprehensive approach to guide communities’ digital equity planning and provide structure for implementing effective solutions. In order to receive federal funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), states, territories, and tribes are required to develop broadband infrastructure and digital equity plans in collaboration with local and regional entities. And states are feeling a sense of urgency as these plans required by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)—the administrator of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program (BEAD) and Digital Equity Act (DEA) funds—must be completed months after states receive their planning grant funds this fall. Community plans can serve as a vehicle for the input states, territories, and tribes need as they answer the following questions:

• How will we engage with the groups that federal broadband programs are designed to help?
• Which projects will serve communities of color and address the historic lack of investment in marginalized communities?
• Which projects will increase meaningful internet adoption and use in communities?

Policymakers can create community-centric solutions only with education, planning, and engagement programs formulated to solve digital equity challenges and structured to engage local stakeholders. Pathways to Digital Equity shows how many solutions have been executed with the help of philanthropy.