NCSC Profiles Leaders for Rural Entrepreneurship

The impacts of globalization and free trade can make the task of building a vibrant local economy daunting. Given the transformation of agriculture from family farms to mega-corps and factory animal facilities, the cards seem doubly stacked against America’s smallest communities — those rural towns and counties with fewer than 10,000 residents.

http://www.smallcommunities.org/ncsc/Kauffman/BestPractices.pdf

There are exceptions, however. Exceptions that provide strong examples for other communities around the country fighting to maintain their vitality, for example. The National Center for Small Communities (NCSC) has selected three such exceptions to highlight for the first Grassroots Rural Entrepreneurship Awards, funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Fairfield, Iowa (population 9,602) received top honors, while Broadway, Va., (pop. 2,600) and Turner County, S.D. (pop. 8,849) were recognized as finalists. The accomplishments of public-private efforts to encourage entrepreneurship in each of these communities should be envied by programs and population centers with significantly more resources readily available to them. For instance:

* The Fairfield Entrepreneur’s Association can identify 2,000 jobs created in the past 15 years and an annual average of $10 million in new construction.

* Facing potential extinction of its downtown with the relocation of businesses to interstate exchanges or failing because of big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, Broadway residents and civic leaders established the nonprofit Broadway Hometown Partnership in 2000. With $30,000 annually in town funds and as much as $85,000 in raised revenues and grants, the Partnership has helped generate an average increase of 19.9 percent in gross revenues for downtown businesses over the past two years — during the recession and the implosion of dot-com businesses!

* Turner County’s Enterprise Facilitation program has led to the creation of 22 new businesses, expansion of 12 others and retention of 16 more in its first five years of working with 665 potential entrepreneurs.

In announcing the awards, NCSC also has identified and published best practices for other small communities to consider and exploit. Many of the lessons learned have relevance to communities of all sizes: the need for a champion; widespread collaboration or buy in; taking a holistic or multi-faceted approach; avoiding cluster approaches to economic development; and, committing for the long haul of several years.

Profiles of the three communities, the lessons learned, and descriptions of various activities local officials can use to spur entrepreneurship are provided in NCSC’s free publication, Grassroots Rural Entrepreneurship: Best Practices for Small Communities. The brief resource is available at http://www.smallcommunities.org.

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