Smart Communities

Pew Partnership Adds New Homepage

Take a look at the new home page of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change and you will see our new web movie that describes our Thriving Communities work and you can also go directly to our latest Solutions for America newsletter. On the latter, I would call your attention to our interview with Harvard's Dr. Jack Shonkoff on what neuroscience has shown affects the development of young children. Also updates on LeadershipPlenty and Learning to Finish are included.

Small Town America Gets a Windfall

In my quest to highlight small town life, I read with great interest the story in yesterday's New York Times about Ewing, Kentucky. It seems that a county-wide tax on insurance has helped Ewing gain some much needed cash to improve their community. A town with no revenue source, Ewing will benefit from the county-imposed tax because of its incorporation some year's earlier. The town, not the county, has the right to the revenues collected from its residents. In a win-win for the town officials, they get the windfall without having to impose the tax. Talk about good fortune and living right!

So now Ewing is thinking about what to do with the extra money that could be $12,000-$18,000. One of the first thoughts is a park to rekindle the public space lost when several town businesses closed down. There are other ideas on the table. I hope they will think about how to preserve their history and their culture also. It is a town with an interesting railroad past and a real sense of place. In reading the story I am reminded of an example in Smart Communities, Almena, Wisconsin, that was in a similar situation. Almena could provide some pointers for Ewing on how to create a new future.

Women Philanthropists Pool Resources

Yesterday I spoke at Charlottesville's Women United in Philanthropy's annual luncheon. This group, like many around the country, invites women to join with other women and support causes in the community. Women have been generous for years but groups like these have wide appeal and give small and large donors an opportunity to work together. If your community does not have such a group, think about joining with others to start one.

The Women's Philanthropy group in Shreveport have been key players in efforts there on dropout prevention. The investments and personal commitment of that group has been instrumental in investing in innovative ways to keep kids in school. The following excerpt from the Community Foundation of Shreveport Bossier's annual report will give you an idea of the impact groups like this can have.:

The Women’s Philanthropy Network has made a significant impact on
Bethune Middle Academy and Laurel Street School. Its $98,700 grant
provides the extras that mean so much—books which the student can
keep, reading software, rewards for good behavior and grades, field
trips and much more—experiences that many of these students have
never had. Last year the schools’ success can be measured—better
attendance, fewer suspensions and incremental increases in reading
and math scores. These four factors—attendance, behavior,
reading and math—are the main indicators for staying in school.
We salute the 164 women who have worked so hard to create
a vision of quality education in our community!

State Programs Help People Make It

In one of the more innovative programs I have seen for a while, 20 state governments are providing low-income workers with supplements to help them get by and keep working in this economic downturn. As you have read on this blog for the last few months, communities and states have to provide for those in most need. I don't think that the tax rebate will do the job. Of particular interest to me about this story is that it is listed in the New York Times as both a national story and a business story. What does that tell us? Keeping people employed and giving them a small amount of disposable income to spend on gasoline, car repairs, and food--helps business. This is one of those times that we have got to color outside the lines if we are to ride out this economic storm. Twenty states are getting it right.

Just to see what can happen if we don't help the poorest workers, take a look at the strategy to cut poverty in half in ten years. These state programs are on the right track.

Great Rural Blog

Take a look at this blog in your spare time this week. Very well done.

What to do on Monday: Visit a Small Town Near You

This weekend branch out. Visit a small town near you and spend some money. They have hardware stores, restaurants, book stores just to name a few places to think about stopping. Also look for festivals in your area particularly in wine country. Enjoy the ride. Let us know where you go.

Small Town America: Needs Higher Education

Usually when people talk about small towns and higher education, they are talking about kids going to college or the number of college graduates in a town. While both are important, there is another link: higher education as a resource for small towns. There are people and institutions who are ready and willing to help small towns think through and plan their future. The entry points can be in almost any unit within a university or college but a good place to start looking is agriculture, extension, business, and education. Some institutions have formal outreach departments. These are points of entry to research, technical assistance, and tools to help small town leadership make new decisions. There may also be some help accessing grant monies. In Minnesota, the Small Towns Institute assists rural communities throughout the state with just these kinds of issues. Mississippi State University has already compiled a list of resources that will be helpful in a range of planning and community development activities. YourTown Alabama is a design service offered by Auburn University to small towns throughout the state. Although fee-driven it is much less than a for-profit company is likely to charge. I have written before about Auburn's Rural Studio but that is well worth another look. There are many more examples of important rural work happening at colleges and universities--this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Likewise there are state and federal government resources that provide and help identify resources for rural areas. USDA has a great resource page for grants. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania is a great resource in that state that links dollars to university researchers and communities. The North Carolina Rural Center has a wonderful resource section to help on many topical areas.

As communities are thinking about what to do next, contact your local or regional university or college. There is likely someone there ready to help.

Small Town America: Get Competitive

I honestly believe that small town america can the rebuilding block for America. People like the connections that can be made, the Internet opens global opportunities, land is available, and shipping can be done from anywhere. But too often the pieces are not in place to make small towns competitive on the quality of life side of the ledger to say nothing of the workforce needed. The Hometown Competitiveness project in Nebraska is having success in putting small towns on the road to sustainability and competitiveness. I am not quite sure if there is a charge for their services or not but there are tools on their website that will help you get organized--tomorrow.

They have four critical parts to their approach: leadership, entrepreneurship, youth, and charitable giving. Sounds about right to me. You certainly have to have all four in place to make progress. The key is understanding them in the context of your community. I also like the Small Towns project that is part of HandMade in America. They offer consulting advice to towns all over the country around heritage tourism and economic development. I am impressed by work at the Appalachian Regional Commission around community planning. I will throw in our Smart Communities work also. We mobilize whole communities to work differently and smarter--and it works.

Bottom line: Whether you need outside help or not, read up on what these folks are doing and you will see similar approaches. You have to have new leaders that have vision and persistence--they can see it and see it through. You have to find ways to keep youth in the community. And you have to build on your strengths. You don't need a consultant to tell you that. Do as much as you can locally. You take that to the bank.

Small Town America: Go Retail

There is a trend among revived and reviving small towns that has to do with downtown--in a word they have one. Places that are doing better have coffee shops, some retail, and usually a restaurant or two. While you will likely not have a chain store right in town there are still some places to shop. Just recently some friends and I were out on a jaunt to find Edna Lewis' grave and home community in nearby Orange, VA, and landed for lunch in tiny Gordonsville. What a find! A french bakery, upscale restaurant, iron work/art galley, and a terrific dress shop--were conveniently located on main street. There were other shops that looked great, too. It was destination experience--I am already planning a return trip to try the other restaurant and to check out the nearby wineries. This is, of course, the idea. Having enough for people to spend their money on and creating a desirable place to live.

A long way from Gordonsville is Oelwein, Iowa, that had the same idea. Going in the wrong direction in population and with its economy, Oelwein has turned things around by focusing on their downturn. Almost destroyed by a tornado in 1968, Oelwein had to rebuild most of the town. Although lesser places might have thrown in the towel, not this town. They have come back strong and are a testament to what can be done. The town is an active player in the Great Eastern Iowa Tractorcade that winds it way through part of Iowa and are seeing a resurgence in their economy and their quality of life. Once the "hub" for railroad traffic, they are building on that heritage as well.

Small towns like Gordonsville and Oelwein are inventing the futures for themselves. One of my favorite quotes from Charles Kettering goes something like this. When asked the difference between inventors and the rest of us he answered. "most of us are thinking about where we have been, inventors are thinking about where they are going." These towns are going somewhere.

Editorial: Must read.

Tom Friedman's op-ed in yesterday's New York Times is a must read. We must get back to basic investments and the facts.

Small Town America: Still Chugging

Today I want to begin a week-long series on Small Town America. I am interested in small towns, their culture, and their future, but I am particularly interested in bringing to all of our attention why we need them. I wrote once that we didn't or shouldn't want a country connected by fast food restaurants and interstate highways. America has always been a nation of contrasts and difference. Small towns reflect that diversity and much more.

Union Springs, Al, is a community that could have faded into the history books. Located in Bullock County, Union Springs has more than a third of its families living below the poverty line. But poverty is not what defines Union Springs. Thanks to an energetic group of people, Union Springs comes alive several times a year with its Conecuh people presentations among others. The restored Red Door Theatre(a renovated Episcopal Church) is bringing people to the community for the first time and then back again. If you apply the principles of Smart Communities, the town is definitely building on its assets, working together, and using the past to define the future. This is a town that celebrates its hunting traditions with a bird dog monument. It has a full complement of local businesses--granted no mall--but plenty of places to buy local. And it has a history to share. Union Springs is the kind of town that said "I think I can" and did. My guess is that the next step will be tackling the education and poverty issue. Only about two-thirds of the students in Bullock County finish high school. This should be their next big community project.

What to do on Monday: Find the Regional Players

The first place to start to get the regional ball rolling is to find out who is doing what. Here are a few places to begin your journey: 1) Chambers of Commerce (many have expanded their roles beyond cities and are now regional); grantmakers are often part of regional groups call RAGS (regional grantmakers); regional economic organizations; and the United Way.

I would ask these three questions: 1) Do you work regionally?; 2) How do you define our region?; and 3) What are examples of your regional work and its results? Likely these organizations will point you to other people and places who are doing regional work. What is needed is a regional map that literally connects the dots. For example, you need to know how nonprofits are working together to meet needs across the region. You need to know if economies of scale could be realized if county and city had a joint purchasing plan? and You need to know who and how economic recruiting is being done for maximum effectiveness. When you know all this you will have a better idea how well your area is doing developing a regional strategy. You should have a busy Monday!