This paper examines the growth of suburban poverty in four metropolitan areas, with a particular focus on the role of the philanthropic sector in fostering institutional adaptation to the new geography of poverty. As the pattern of poverty has become more dispersed, has the organizational infrastructure of nonprofit service provision kept pace? How has the distinctive social, political, philanthropic, and business organizational endowment of suburban areas affected their ability to create appropriate nonprofit capacities? Focusing on four metropolitan areas - Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, and Denver - we examine the extent to which local foundations are in fact supporting innovation and strengthening organizational infrastructure for responding to poverty throughout the region. In Chicago and Denver, which each benefited from earlier philanthropic efforts to promote regional connections, our data suggest that foundations have played a stronger regional and system change role than in Atlanta or Detroit. However, the experiences of foundations, even in Chicago and Denver, offer a sobering assessment of the contributions that the philanthropic sector is likely to make in building and sustaining system reform at the regional level
