Posts Tagged ‘Wisconsin’

Homework Assignment: Why are people moving to your region?

May 27th, 2011

I’ve got a homework assignment for you. And it’s going to take a little research. Last week I identified the 30-44 year-old age group as a potential sweet spot for rural communities seeking to attract new residents. At the same time, I challenged people to do their own research and decide for themselves what age group makes sense for community. The challenge begs the question, “Why do people move to your rural town?” Many of us have general answers to this question: It’s a great place to live. Good schools. Lower housing costs. But those answers lack the specificity and details communities need if they hope to be serious about attracting new residents. I know of two projects in the Upper Midwest who are serious about attracting and retaining new residents, and they’ve been doing their homework. The first is located just across the border in Minnesota, where the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development Commission (UMVRDC) recently conducted a study titled “Regional Recruitment: Strategies to Attract and Retain Newcomers.” Although the region has typically fared better economically than rural South Dakota, farming and the “prairie pothole” topography dominate. The second effort is a bit further away. Called the Gogebic Range Next Generation Initiative (NGI), this project is located in Iron County, WS and Gogebic County, MI. Although different in geography and environment – iron mining, trees, and low mountains dominant – we share similar outmigration patterns. Like us, the region’s population peaked in the 1920s, and young people are often encouraged to move away. While both regions deserve an “A” for their research efforts, I don’t believe it is cheating when other rural communities take what they learn from this research and apply it to their own communities. To help, I’ll share a few highlights from my notes.

Newcomers have different characteristics

In the case of West Central Minnesota, the study showed that new residents have slightly different characteristics than current residents. Dawn Hegland, Executive Director of the UMVRDC, recently identified a few of these differences in a report to the Yellow Medicine County Board. She explained that new residents:

tend to be well-educated with higher-than-average incomes, and are more likely to buy or start businesses, take leadership positions in the community, and engage in volunteer activities. Sixty percent of them had no previous ties to the area.” (source: "Yellow Medicine County Doing OK," Steve Browne, Marshall Independent, May 11, 2011.)

She also noted that some of newcomers moved to the region without having a job in place. That’s an interesting dynamic worth further investigation.

Gogebic Next Generation Initiative

Among the discoveries I find most compelling from the Next Generation Initiative research is a ranking of the “location preferences” that attract new residents to the Gogebic region. Two factors stand out in this research: First, because the study parallels existing research from the Michigan Cool Cities Study, we see that the reasons people move to this rural region are very different from the reasons people move to urban areas. (see image below) As the project leader, Will Andresen notes rural communities who focus on developing and promoting community assets that urban places have in abundance, may be investing in areas that their target market does not seek. A better approach would be to invest in existing assets that attract new residents. Why not make those assets even better? (source: “Voices of Rural Wisconsin Part Four: Shaping a Healthy Future,” Portal Wisconsin, audio interview)

A second take away from the NGI research is that people who move to the Gogebic region do not rank the need for a job as a top priority. This does not imply that economic opportunities are not important. People have to be able to make a living. But it does suggest that communities can’t place all of their eggs in the job creation basket.

Are you ready to get started?

The West Central Minnesota and the Gogebic projects offer us a glimpse into why people are moving into two rural regions. I’d be interested in hearing how closely what they have discovered matches with what you’ve experienced in your community. I also hope that you will share the results of any research you’ve conducted. Having access to your research won’t eliminate the need for communities to do their own homework. But it will give them a jump start on the process. Photo Credit: jsorbieus - Flickr

Tags: brain gain, Michigan, Minnesota, Next Generation - Gogebic, people atttraction, UMVRDC, Wisconsin
Posted in Community Development, Community Engagement, Economic Development, Rural | Comments (0)

5 Secrets to Launching a rural Economic Gardening program

April 21st, 2011

Midwesterners are usually good at growing things. In fact, many of us participated in 4-H as youngsters, where we raised animals, grew vegetables, and built projects to be entered at Achievement Days during the county fair. But for some reason, we can’t seem to grow an economic gardening program -- at least not in South Dakota. That’s why I invited Beth Plutchak of Beth Plutchak Consulting and Sue Gleason of SyzyGy50 to share their story. They’ve been instrumental in creating an economic gardening program in Sauk County, Wisconsin. Having read through both Beth’s blog post and their Final Report for the project, I thought I’d share 5 secrets that might help grow a program in South Dakota and other rural states?

5 Secrets to starting an economic gardening program

#1 – There are no secrets. Let’s get that out of the way from the start. It’s a lot of hard work and innovative thinking. It also takes a little bit of risk. #2 – It takes a trained staff. Both Beth and Sue bring experience to the table in their roles as consultants. Beth had been in banking, and Sue worked in workforce and economic development. They also benefited from attending Economic Gardening training sessions sponsored by the Edward Lowe Foundation. Yet they admitted to a learning curve when digging in the databases used to help businesses. I think it’s safe to say training is a must for staff members. #3 – It requires a regional approach. Sauk County has a population of 59,000, which is larger than all but two of South Dakota’s counties. Based on what I’ve learned from Beth and Sue, I think it would probably take an even larger population to generate enough business to keep one staff person working fulltime. And I’m sure a larger population base would help with efficiencies as well. Although I don’t know what size is optimal, operating an economic gardening program in a state like South Dakota would require a multi-county effort. #4 -- Public-private partnerships may be the way to go. Although many economic gardening programs offer their services to businesses for free, the Sauk County program charged participating businesses $100. While free is probably preferable, I do like the concept of charging businesses a minimal fee. Not only does it help with the program costs, but it makes sure that businesses are committed to the process. I also like the idea of partnering with local economic development corporations and foundations. That way no one entity is bearing the full brunt of starting the project. #5 – Get started “now.” It’s never going to be perfect. Beth and Sue did their research before launching this effort, but they didn’t have everything worked out perfectly either. Read their Final Report and you will discover that some of their assumptions were wrong. They had to make changes on the fly, and they’d like to make further changes in the future. I really appreciate this because change and adaptation are a part of the entrepreneurial process. It’s great to see a public-private partnership following the same principles. Prior to reading Beth’s guest post, I hadn’t realized that the Sauk County Economic Gardening program was a pilot project. As Beth and Sue mention, they are currently negotiating with several entities to expand and continue their effort. I hope they are successful. I think they are onto a great concept. It’s the type of project that could benefit rural communities everywhere. If you have any additional questions you would like to ask of Beth and Sue, fire away. They’ve already been very gracious with their information, and I’m sure they will answer any comments as time allows.

Tags: Economic Gardening, entrepreneurship, Wisconsin
Posted in Economic Development, Rural | Comments (0)

Can economic gardening really work in rural areas?

April 20th, 2011

…or will it take a huge influx of cash to fund the program?

Editorial note: I recently invited Beth Plutchak of Beth Plutchak Consulting and Sue Gleason of SyzyGy50 to share their story about how they, as independent consultants, have partnered with the Sauk County Development Corporation to create an Economic Gardening program in Sauk County, WI. I was particularly interested in their project because I want to get a better handle on how rural communities are developing economic gardening programs. Beth responded with some great information. Guest post by Beth Plutchak In 2008 Alliant Energy Company brought Chris Gibbons, the guru of Economic Gardening to Madison, WI as part of an ongoing series on local Economic Development. At the time I had just left a career in banking to start consulting for businesses and Economic Development Organizations. My partner Sue Gleason, was still working for Thrive, an eight county Economic Development Region located in overwhelmingly rural South Central Wisconsin. There were a number of things that really rang true for me in that eight hour session:

the importance of growing local businesses rather than traditional retention and recruitment
the availability of tools for businesses that had been unavailable in the recent past
the data showing that even though we all knew jobs were created by small businesses, we now know that net jobs are created by small businesses with certain characteristics
the importance of supporting local entrepreneurs.

Sue and I were both pretty sold on the approach early on in the session. In the afternoon the inevitable question came up, “Well, this all sounds very good, but how much does it cost?” Gibbons program in Littleton, CO cost approximately $600,000 per year, which puts it well out of the range of rural communities. The major expenses of the program are salaries for trained staff and the cost of databases and tools. The funding mechanism for the Colorado program is unavailable in Wisconsin, except at the state level. Businesses in Littleton pay income taxes to the City. As their revenues grow the city’s tax receipts grow, a nice direct feedback mechanism. Much of the new activity in Economic Gardening has taken place at the state level in Florida and Washington State, for example, where state income tax revenues fund the program.

Fast forward to 2010

Sue was also working as an independent consultant by this time. We continued our conversations on how to bring an Economic Gardening Program into Wisconsin. Agencies were interested, but the issue always came back to the budget. Fond du Lac County and the City of Mauston were able to obtain grants to put programs in place, but the nature of grant funding is to go away once the program has been in existence for a period of time. The then Executive Director of the Sauk County Development Corporation, Karna Hanna, had also attended the Alliant Energy session in 2008. She was interested in putting together a program, but her budget would not support one. We started taking a harder look at the budget elements. The main costs are staff and databases. Sue and I were already trained in the tools and had some experience using them. We had each attended the Economic Gardening training sessions at the Edward Lowe Foundation. We could contract the work and SCDC would not have to fund additional staff. The costs of databases continued to come down, largely with the help of Chris Gibbons who has been working to convince some of the large providers that there is a market for lower priced tools. Some of the databases were already available to us through the South Central Wisconsin Library System and the University of Wisconsin Business School Library. We thought, why don’t we do what rural people always do, and make the best use of what we have available, rather than waiting until we can afford more?

What about the costs?

The missing piece was how to pay for Sue and my consulting time, since we would be performing the role of paid staff. One of the issues that Gibbons emphasizes in the Economic Gardening Training is the disastrous consequences for local communities of the so-called race to the bottom. Whenever companies focus on cutting costs in order to lower their prices, they are setting themselves up to be put out of business by someone with the capital to cut price even deeper. Economic Gardening gives companies the tools they need to protect their margins, and to innovate in ways that create barriers to entry for their competition. We didn’t need to provide services for free. We needed to show Return on Investment. We began our program with a pilot that ran until the end of 2010. The pilot was funded by grants from Alliant Energy, the W. R. and Floy A. Sauey Family Foundation, and in-kind donations of time. The participant companies paid $100 per company to take part. The pilot funding covered services to the companies of $100 per hour in consulting fees, plus extra costs of database passes and tools. These costs will be borne fully by participating companies going forward. The total budget for the pilot program was just under $20,000. We went into the pilot with the following assumptions:

There is a need and desire for this program in Rural Communities
Companies will pay for services that directly impact their bottom line
Consultants who have been through the Lowe Foundation Economic Gardening training are well equipped to provide the technical services the program requires
The cost of ongoing professional development, both formal (Lowe Training) and informal (learning the new tools) can be borne by the consultants and factored into the costs of services
Program overhead costs could also be borne by the consultants as the day-to-day costs of running their businesses
It is important to have SCDC sponsor the program
SCDC and the consultants would be able to build awareness of the program through press releases and direct contact with companies which could potentially benefit from the program, as well as word of mouth referrals

During the pilot stage we worked with nine separate companies, providing a variety of services. After the pilot we asked the companies to take part in a survey, and the new SCDC Director Gene Dalhoff conducted interviews with the company owners. The companies overwhelmingly wanted SCDC to continue with the project.

What did we learn?

We have a couple of challenges going forward. One is building word of mouth about the program. This is harder than we thought it would be. There were also costs associated with the start-up which we didn’t accurately estimate. Sue and I spent more time on program development, materials development, marketing and training than we expected we would. We are currently in talks with the family foundation that funded the pilot, concerning funding for program start-up costs as we transition to a self-funded program. We are also looking at spreading the costs among EDOs, by inviting other agencies and municipalities to take part in our model. There will likely be some kind of membership cost to establish and maintain a program, but we still expect the majority of the funding to come from fees to the businesses that take part. We intend to keep EDO costs as low as possible. The results of the SCDC pilot study can be found here. For further information see Beth Plutchak of Beth Plutchak Consulting and Sue Gleason of SyzyGy50 .

Tags: Economic Gardening, Edward Lowe Foundation, entrepreneurship, Sauk County WI, Wisconsin
Posted in Economic Development, Rural | Comments (4)

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April 16th, 2010

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Tags: I feel Friday, North Dakota, Wisconsin
Posted in Rural, Rural Life | Comments (1)

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October 15th, 2009

Buy Torsemide Without Prescription, Early this week, I had the opportunity to pack my suitcase and head to Pepin, Wisconsin. Lydia Gnos, the elementary school principal in Pepin, and I met at a conference almost 2 ½ years ago where I shared the story of Miner County's transformation. The story resonated with her, as it does with many people, and she had kept Miner County's story in her back pocket as she explored starting a community dialogue project in Pepin.

Monday was the official launch of the Pepin-Stockholm Community Dialogue Project, and I was privileged to be a part of that start. Sharing how dialogue transformed our community is just one of the ways we can help rural communities as they begin to reimagine their rural places.

I am excited for Pepin. The people there care deeply about their community (as evidenced by a great turnout of the "Key Communicators") and realize that talking and listening to each other about their future is the first step.

The presentation slides from the presentation, in addition to narrative about key concepts, are below.

Building Community Through Dialogue

View more documents from Rural Learning Center.

I think there are a few concepts that stand out as I think about starting the hard work of a community dialogue project in Pepin. They include:

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Involve young people. Youth are vital in the process of transforming a community for several reasons: they can say what needs to be said (and question why things are the way they are) and they are typically not hindered by the prospect change. In addition, buy Torsemide without a prescription, Rx free Torsemide, it is important to involve youth in meaningful work in the community before they leave if you hope they will return someday (creating attachment starts with giving them a purpose in the community).

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Tags: community capitals, education, Pepin WS, Wisconsin
Posted in Community Development, Rural, Training and Events, Youth | Comments (0)

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