Shrinking local government budgets created an economic development environment in which local governments find it more cost effective to outsource development activities than assume the burden of development activities in-house. This research was conducted to quantitatively assess the performance of economic development corporations with the aim to provide an understanding about the efficacy of economic development corporations by analyzing quantitative data to find if rural counties in North Carolina with economic development corporations experience greater economic growth than rural counties without economic development corporations. There is little academic or practitioner research that addresses the performance of economic development corporations. Consequently, little is known about how effective these private non-profit organizations are at increasing economic development at the local level. The results of this study are mixed. Rural municipalities without an economic development corporation have a higher, positive correlation with population and gross domestic product (GDP) variables. Conversely, the correlation for labor, wage and the housing variable shows higher correlation (negative and positive depending on the variable) in rural municipalities that have an economic development corporation. The statistical findings of this research show only a positive effect in labor/wages and housing. The existence of an economic development corporation did not have a positive effect on the