Small Towns Grow Small Businesses

There are plenty of positives to being a small business in a large pond. Start-ups that launch in or near big cities can market themselves to millions of potential customers, join networks of like-minded business owners and take advantage of training and mentoring programs run by local community colleges and professional associations.

A business that starts up in rural America, on the other hand, would seem to face larger hurdles to success. They don't have access to the same kind of customer base, for one thing, and they have far fewer opportunities for peer-to-peer camaraderie.

But that doesn't mean the large stretch of the United States between the East and West coasts lacks entrepreneurial drive. In fact, a study commissioned by the Small Business Administration in 2008 (pre-downturn) found that rates of business openings and closings were nearly the same for rural, suburban and urban areas.  

In summary: Americans who live away from urban centers are just as likely to start businesses as their big-city counterparts.

But they've been just as hard-hit by the slowdown in the U.S. economy. And when it comes to getting a helping hand, rural small-business owners are often overlooked.

Across the country, though, nonprofits and community groups are promoting rural entrepreneurship through a variety of programs. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced grants to 41 organizations for job training and business development in rural areas. The Iowa Economic Development Authority got $200,000 to help restore and revitalize downtown commercial districts in small towns; another $200,000 grant went to a California group to provide training for Native American tribes interested in developing forest-related businesses.

One model of development, known as Enterprise Facilitation, has been tested in a few different states that have been losing population in rural counties. The collaborative, community-based program harkens back to the pioneer-era spirit of barn raising: a single person can start a business, but it will grow and prosper only by drawing on the skills and effort of a supportive group.

In the Enterprise Facilitation system, a staff facilitator gives confidential, free mentoring to anyone interested in starting their own business; a board of local business leaders also meets monthly to offer their own assistance, whether it's an introduction to a supplier or advice on getting financing.

The Enterprise Facilitation model can deliver impressive results. Between 2003 and 2011, the Northeast Kansas Enterprise Facilitation group helped 52 businesses get off the ground and helped in the expansion of 17 more. The Southeast Enterprise Facilitation Project in South Dakota has helped 56 businesses open since it began in 2003. (Encouragingly enough, the number of businesses has grown each year, despite the economic circumstances.)

The nonprofit Center for Rural Affairs, based in Nebraska, has been at the forefront of rural economic development issues. Although much of its work has been focused on farming, the center's staff has also advocates for more microlending to rural entrepreneurs and has lobbied for changes in various Congressional farm bills to help fund business-related projects. One of its programs, the Rural Enterprise Assistance Project provides advice, management training and microloans to Nebraska-based businesses with five or fewer employees.

Initiatives that focus on the economic development of a whole town or county can also be an important way to drive rural entrepreneurship. Such programs have been especially successful in the tourism sector. While a small town may not be able to attract visitors to its single covered bridge, a regional collaboration that promotes a covered-bridge driving tour can draw visitors from other states. Those visitors spend money on meals, bed-and-breakfasts and souvenirs, supporting businesses that couldn't turn a profit if they were based solely on their local customer base.

People who choose to live in the country may value the wide-open vistas and uncrowded roads. But they also know the value of community. Local support and collaboration is small-town America's secret weapon when it comes to business creation. Now it's time to get the word out that entrepreneurship can thrive beyond the country's big urban centers.

MainStreet

   
 

Small-town Magic Disappears

By P.F. Wingard

Have you ever seen the “lifeblood of an economy?” I’ve heard the term used to the point of becoming a cliché, but never visualized it. Thinking back, it was in plain sight where I grew up. I never knew it for what it was then, for what it meant, and now I miss it.

Where I grew up, a small Southern town, the “lifeblood” was in the town’s textile mills. The largest of them, called the American Thread, turned raw cotton into spools of thread. Other mills wove thread into fabric. Still others turned bolts of fabric into clothing. A small train would come to town twice a day, pulling four or five box cars; it would drop off bales of cotton and leave with bolts of cloth or crates filled with spools of thread.

I’m struck with how magical it all seems, viewed from an age where technology should make it seem just the opposite. I can no more imagine how to produce goods like that than they could understand a cellphone or a personal computer. But there is a difference. The town of my childhood wasn’t an idea; it was real. What it produced could be held in your hand or used to make other things. It could be witnessed. This is becoming so rare.

As the mills were choked off, the town shrank. The store-fronts on Main Street closed one by one. Slowly, the town became a “bedroom community,” meaning people only slept there; they no longer worked or shopped locally.

The magic of the small town used to be so American, but now, not so much. I miss the sense of a place’s value, the sense of a community born of a shared purpose. We all had a hand in the town’s magic. Three times a day, when the streets filled, we reminded each other of our mutual dependency. When the train passed through, we all saw the fruit of our combined labor.

As a country, we’ve lost more than can ever be said. We continue to perceive that we add value but, like an amputated limb, it is no longer real. We’ve become a nation of dot-coms instead of widgets. We’re part of a global economy whose lifeblood is all but invisible to the average person. We are cogs of multinational corporations.

The train isn’t coming through America as much anymore; the track is being ripped out, leaving a scar through the country’s heart. The magic has faded and what made America is going fast, if not already gone. In the growing void are re-purposed lives, lives that are less connected and interdependent. We are becoming a lonely people who no longer pull together in a shared purpose, who can no longer see the fruit of its labor or take personal pride in its products. Since we depend less on each other, we are prone to squabble over the scraps. “Who to blame” is the most deadly symptom of our disease. Instead of repairing the damage, it rips us further apart.

Small towns were far from perfect and there were many aspects that I’m glad have passed. My point is not so much how to fix things but more of a gentle reminder that not everything in the past was bad. We have but to remember that we once built things and we can again if we stop trying for the next big idea or quick buck.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution