Georgia Good

Georgia Good, executive director of the Rural Advancement Fund (RAF), has assisted low-income people in rural South Carolina for more than 40 years. Her upbringing on a Union farm and the poor medical service her mother received influenced her decision to pursue a career helping others.

Good helped found Orangeburg’s Family Health Center, Inc., a health clinic for poor families that annually generates more than $30 million. She has also served as director of the South Carolina Cooperative Development Fund, director of the Area Development Center in Orangeburg County, and led the National Sharecroppers Fund, one of the oldest farm groups that serve African American and other small farmers in the rural Carolinas. Through her work as vice president of the Washington, D.C. based Rural Coalition, she was instrumental in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) improving its services to all farmers, including passage of key legislation to assist small groups in economic development, and settlement of a case to overcome USDA laxity in fairly treating farmers, benefiting thousands of African American farmers.

She has received the Ford Foundation Leadership Development Fellowship, Alpha Phi Alpha Distinguished Service Award, and the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Woman of the Year Award, among others. Good attended Claflin University, the University of California-Berkeley, the New York Training Institute, New York City College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A life member of the NAACP, Good attends Mount Pisgah Baptist Church and is the proud mother of two sons, Michael (Lavern) and Eric, and has three grandchildren, David, Erica and Robert. Her affirmation that guides her work: “At this point, in my work venture with rural citizens of South Carolina, I ask God to guide me on a path of service that is safe, and let my journey be a work of grace.”