July 1, 2014
Mike Corthell, Editor
Mike Corthell, Editor
GET THE BALL ROLLING
1. Organize your
group: I would suggest that you start with a small key group of
community members. These members should be stakeholders in the
community and people who are directly affected by the economy. I
would not recommend that this be a governmental commission or any
other public body where open meetings are required. Early on, your
work should be confidential, as you will be addressing controversial
issues. The goal of this group is to lay the groundwork; public input
will come later. Members on this task force should be there for the
long run. A real problem with most groups is that they want to
organize like a service club with annual elections and rotating
members. It is better to look at this group as being there for the
long run with gradual changes in leadership and members. The service
club approach results in leaders trying to get short term programs in
during the year they are the chairperson so that they look
successful.
2. Begin to define
the problem: You may think you know what the problem is when in
reality you are looking at a symptom. For example, many communities
will state that the problem is not enough jobs. That may really be
the symptom of other economic factors that are preventing business
growth in the area. No problem stands alone. They are always
interrelated to other problems. For example, business growth may be
hampered by the lack of sewer capacity, which in turn is caused by
lack of funds, which is caused by a low tax base. Define your
problems in the light of what would be needed for a total solution.
You will need to take into consideration all factors of a community
including infrastructure, work force, education level, available
industrial and business sites, competition, political situation, life
style, and so forth. I am not going to outline all the factors
because if you are serious you and your group will be doing some
research and reading about the subject. Your State University will
have reams of material for you. If you are serious, educate yourself.
Amateurs usually do not.
3. Prepare a list of
all economic development resources: Every state has a myriad of
economic development agencies. Most counties and regions have
economic development organizations of some sort. It has become almost
mandatory in order to receive a Federal or State grant that some
element of economic development is being done. On top of all this,
there are hundreds of consulting groups, both non-profit and for
profit. Universities, Colleges and Jr. Colleges usually have some
program that is related to economic development. Our goal is not to
list these for you but to have you search them out. Start at the
state level and work down. You will also need to contact Federal
level help such as the Dept of Agriculture's Rural Development Agency
and the Economic Development Agency (EDA). There are others such as
housing related agencies. So keep looking.
Contact as many of
these organizations personally as you can and build a database of
what services are available to you. Ferret through the claims and
discover what concrete services they can do in your town. Most
organizations involved in economic development are not paid for
results; they are paid for programs. Programs earn grants, which
cover the overhead. The results of the programs are hidden behind the
smoke and mirrors or buzz words like "planning". Get down
to the real deliverables that you can use in your community. Planning
may well be one of the deliverables, but you will need others.
4. Think globally,
interact regionally; and act locally. Get this attitude in concrete
into the mission statement of your organization. Avoid the "poor
me" syndrome so often heard from rural areas. Everybody has
problems. In fact, often more Federal help per capita is available in
rural areas than in urban areas. Avoid the wasteful and rude "Us
versus them" attitude. Also, stay away from political nonsense.
It is a fact of life that more voters live in urban areas than in
rural areas. Some popular legislative agendas in urban areas that are
in conflict with rural values, such as some environmental issues, are
just facts of life. Concentrate on what you can change. All you can
do on the other is to provide education about your point of view, but
don't waste your budget on dead horses.
STEP TWO AFTER
GETTING STARTED
Decide how you
are going to finance your organization. Avoid the common trap of
claiming that other organizations are not doing their job; and
therefore, the City or County should pay you instead. If you are
smart, you will use their resources, let them pay the admin costs and
you will concentrate directly on your mission. Get your own sources
of funding for your mission. If you are perceived as being part of
the solution, you will be able to collect dues and donations from the
stakeholders. Later on, if you are successful, you may be able to get
grants from organizations such as Rural Development.
Avoid the trap
of thinking that you must have paid staff. Well-organized volunteers
can run an excellent program. In fact, if the organization can not
run a good volunteer outfit, it will not be better with paid staff
and the funds will just go into admin. There may be a time later for
paid staff, but not now.
Avoid the trap
that you must raise funds to hire some guru. A successful promoter in
another town may have simply been in the right place at the right
time. If your budget is large enough, there may come the time to hire
a specialist to run your organization; but you do not have to start
that way.
Use consultants
warily. We will talk about this later.
Get public input
and build consensus. There are many ways to do this. I like to
believe that in the end, the old fashion American way of debate
results in the best way to drag out hard issues, identify them, and
address solutions. A variety of consensus building methods exist and
the academic community will provide help in staging them. Visioning
is a method of bringing the community together to discuss issues.
Your State University can probably provide a facilitator for such a
meeting. Consultants will often hold community-visioning meetings. Be
careful. Some of these meetings have an agenda to lead the community
to their program as the solution to the problems addressed. The
problem with these methods is that often the community is left with a
warm fuzzy feeling without hard issues being resolved. Group
consensus building often centers on what people will agree on while;
in reality, what they disagree on are the real issues. The social
pressure in the meeting may prevent dissenters from speaking up. I
have seen many organizations hold visioning meetings, develop a
program based on consensus, and then just get creamed by an
opposition group that forms because real issues where not addressed.
Community meetings often raise expectations, leaving you holding the
bag when they do not materialize. Community input is important but it
cannot all come from open meetings. Some stakeholders will not state
their view in public but will become very active if they perceive
their interests being at risk. The community may not even want
development. Some rural communities have business interests that want
development and residents who moved there hoping that no growth would
occur. In the end run, your group may have to slowly build community
support by selling your program while addressing the concerns of the
community. Few great leaders or great movements ever started with
"community consensus".
At any rate, you
must find out what the community will support and what it will not
support at this time. This is your starting point.
Redefine your
list of problems after the community input. Prioritize in terms of
what is needed most from an economic viewpoint and then list in order
of what the community will support at this time. Then, in light of
both lists, prepare a list of problems in the order you will tackle
them. The top few of these will become your immediate goals and the
rest become long term goals. Eliminate those that are just plain
impossible. For example, if the rail line has been pulled up and the
right away sold, it is probably impossible to get the railroad back.
You may have to build community support for important goals that just
can n Mike Corthell, Editorot be started now because of community opposition.
Prepare a list
of community resources. This should be a brainstorming session. No
idea is stupid. My interest in collecting leaves may sound stupid to
you but perhaps enough people exist with that interest to become a
tourism resource. This list will include business sites, industrial
sites, existing businesses and existing employers, medical
facilities, tourist attractions, what you like about the area, what
your relatives like about the area, utility resources, weather, and
so forth
Prepare a list
of all sources of personal, business, and public income to the
community. Federal and State agencies can help with this. This list
will include all employers, both private and public, retirement
incomes, transfer payments, welfare, and other sources of personal
income. Public income will be taxes, transfer payments, grants, and
other entitlements. Business income sources will be retail, services,
manufacturing, recreation, farming, timber, mining, industrial, and
other sources. You must clearly identify all sources of money coming
from the outside into the community. Again, this is not only from the
sale of goods and services but also such items as retirement income.
It is this external income that drives your internal economy. Your
internal economy is the sale of goods and services by local
businesses to local residents and local businesses. This information
will allow you to address expansion and retention issues.
STEP THREE, DO IT
After assembling
all the data, it is time to start action. This is an ongoing process
of planning, funding and organizing, doing, evaluating, correcting,
doing again. We will talk more about this process later. Most
activity will fall under the following actions.
Retention:
This is the process of helping to keep the industry, business, and
economic activities you have.
Social and
educational climate: This is the process of improving the town you
live in through having better educational facilities, better housing,
lower crime rate, and similar areas of concern. This is often part of
a recruiting effort.
Gardening:
This is the effort to develop local entrepreneurs who will start
businesses. This effort ranges from technical assistance to peer
support groups.
Recruiting:
This is the effort to attract outside firms to locate to your
community. This is probably the most difficult approach to be
successful in but it may have the highest payoff if you succeed. e.
Recreation
and Tourism: This is the effort to develop local resources as to
attract tourists. Recreational efforts range from targeting day use
populations from local urban areas to efforts to become a destination
resort.
Outside
incomes: This is the effort to attract retirement populations and
others such as lone eagles whose incomes come from outside sources
but who spend money locally. Lone eagles are self-employed persons
who often sell expertise or consulting but prefer to live in a rural
area. Artists would be similar. Lone eagles often have high incomes.
Usually they have started their business elsewhere but retain the
clients when they move to a rural area.
Electronic
infrastructure: This is the effort to modernize the communications
system in the area, such as installing fiberoptics in order to
connect with the outside world and allow electronically based
information systems to be used locally. Also, this may allow Internet
based businesses to exist.
Infrastructure: This is the effort to provide community services,
building sites, sewer, water, and other services so that the
community can handle growth.
Build it and
they will come: This is the effort to build, often with public money,
business or industrial sites for sale or rent in order to attract
business or industry. Often low rates are offered as an incentive.
Incentives:
Monetary incentives offered by States and communities to expanding
businesses, recruited businesses, and sometimes to retain businesses.
These range from cash payments to tax breaks. Incentives vary greatly
between States and communities.
Life Style:
This is recruiting by selling the good points of a community. Rural
communities often market the safe and low stress lifestyle along with
the natural beauty of the rural setting.
Leakage:
This is the effort to bolster the internal economy of a community by
combating buying patterns where residents purchase goods and services
outside the community such as in urban malls or through the internet.
This may include downtown revitalization programs such as walkable
down towns, historic districts, and similar efforts to rebuild down
town cores. Customer service training may be a part of stopping
leakage.
Planning:
This is the process of setting economic objectives, each player's
part, and the method to achieve those objectives.
There are
others, but these are the primary efforts most communities use.
Based on the
needs you have identified, your resources, and the method you chose,
you would now initiate plans and committees to carry out those plans.
I cannot tell you what method to use nor if it will succeed. However,
there are ways to approach the problem. As you formulate your courses
of action, you should develop the partners who will help you. For
example, if your goal were to increase tourism, you would partner
with state and regional tourism agencies. The process is to identify
problems, resources (both community and outside), advantages,
obstacles, and goals. Once these are identified and a course of
action is picked, the committee handling this goal will set up
partnerships with available resource agencies and begin the work. Of
course, a budget is set for this and also a review process.
Limit your
projects to a realistic number based on your organization and its
budget. You will do better if you do a few things well as opposed to
doing a lot of things poorly.
Use consultants
when possible. Some are free through Universities and government.
Remember that often consultants are in the business of pushing their
companies or their particular approach. They can be very successful
if you get the right match for your problems. Check them out. Call
towns they have worked for and see what results were achieved. See if
results were still there several years later. Check for hard results,
not just that everyone really enjoyed the program.
Likewise, try to
find other communities similar to yours and see what has really
worked. Look at an expanse of time and not just the last few months.
Learn from others. You can copy successes when it makes sense and you
can avoid duplicating mistakes.
Stay in the
economic development loops. Remember; think globally, interact
regionally, and act locally.
Put your
programs in motion. Quit talking and start doing. If you are going to
recruit for example, then learn how to do it and give it a try. Your
organization now moves from planning to action.
THE LAST STEP:
EVALUATION
In this business of
development, nothing is carved in stone. New approaches, trends, and
changes in the economy all put us in an always-changing environment.
It is important that you recognize trends, both locally and globally.
When rural communities did not recognize the retail-shopping trend
towards urban malls, they were devastated when change left them
without customers and not enough time to fight back. Evaluation is
the process of seeing how things are going and to change the process
if needed. We talked earlier of the management process steps of
planing, funding, organizing, doing, evaluating, correcting, and
doing again. This is a never-endingEconomic Development for Small
Rural Towns chain. Always be prepared to drop programs that do not
work and start new ones if needed, or to change existing ones.
Quarterly progress reviews are a good idea for your board. Avoid
sacred cows or pet projects that continue to exist in spite of being
ineffective. Evaluate projects on real results, not warm and fuzzy
feelings. Too many dollars are spent on programs that really deliver
nothing directly to the community. People will eventually see through
this and support for such programs from the public will drop. Be
real!
In the evaluation
process, encourage input from the public and from local government.
Be prepared to handle criticism. Listen, and if the input indicates
the need for change, then be willing to change. Also be willing to
defend what you are doing if it is really of value to the community.
You are looking for input from these sources, not management of your
organization by these sources.
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