When you’re planning to add pop-up businesses or shed businesses to your small or rural community, concentrate them in one area. Better to have four sheds or pop up businesses together on a single lot, than fourteen vendors spread out all over. Your goal is to make it feel like a concentrated burst of new […]
Boost your rural retail business with this trick
By Deb Brown The old way of doing business is one building, one business. What if you could test an idea and have a business inside a business? Anyone of us either knows or can find someone who is making things from their home and selling it. What if you encouraged already existing home-based businesses […]
The Role of Public Policy in Rural Community Economic Development
By Paula Jensen My husband is a mechanic. The tools of his trade are important to his work. He has a large toolbox with many drawers lined in soft black padding. His tools lay clean and organized inside each drawer for easy access when he needs the right tool for a job. Yet, when things […]
Community engagement planning: old way vs. Idea Friendly way
You’re familiar with the traditional way of handling community engagement. Once every few years, an outside consultant comes in and leads a community engagement planning meeting. There are lots of flip charts and post it notes. Most of the people who attend hold official titles or formal leadership roles. Almost all are professional middle class […]
