Building Community and saving your town can be overwhelming when you try to do it all alone. This year our focus is helping you along the way.

You can receive help from us in ways we’ve developed over the last almost ten years of working together. You might choose:

Workshops and presentations for your events
Visits to your communities, short-term and long-term
Project consulting for your groups
Training for your teams
Individual and group coaching
Do it yourself with inspiration from our videos, audios, mini-courses, and membership
Free newsletters with new ideas weekly
Articles, posts, reports, and interviews full of stories you can adapt
Free webinars and other videos you can stream anytime
Help with creating rural tracks at your conference

Our first commitment is to provide practical steps you can put into action right away in small towns and rural communities.

Becky McCray and Deb Brown

Co-founders of SaveYour.Town, since 2015

Let Us Guide You: Four Challenges Where We Can Help You Along the Way

Sometimes it feels like you don’t have the support you need, doesn’t it? You can reach out to us for support in these four different situations!

Reach out to SaveYour.Town when you want to boost or regain momentum in your community.

You’ve got a group of folks who are excited to be involved but stuck in old ways of doing things and are frustrated with the meetings, red tape, and no forward movement. Or perhaps you’ve done some projects that were great, but are stalled and wondering what’s next? Let us help shake off their doldrums and get into action right away.

Colfax, Washington, brought Becky in to help boost their momentum, learn new ways to use their empty buildings, and add art in new places. That led them to create a new shared retail space called the Colfax Mercantile Store, update other buildings, and add more new businesses. They’ve updated murals and added new ones, found ways to use chain link fences for new art and they’re still building on their momentum.

Colfax, Washington, mural photo by Sara McKnight

Give us a call when that expensive consultant drops a strategic plan or thick report on you and your team, and you have to figure out what the heck to do with it.

These kinds of plans are particularly pernicious when they are disconnected from what the people themselves want. Your people want the things they are excited about and motivated enough to take action on. Bring us in to work with your community members to find and start on the things they want in your town.

Sharon Frerichs, the mayor in Akron, Iowa had plenty of plans on the shelf, gathering dust over the years. She brought Deb in to bring her town together, take action, and start to bring in new businesses. Beginning with a Plant Your Flag Party, that town has taken off and added seven businesses serving food, a new expanding campground, and a new pool.

Akron, Iowa, Plant Your Flag Party

Reach out when your project feels too big.

Single visits and single presentations are great, but sometimes you need long-term support. Not just the one-and-done. You need something that provides that ongoing support as you continue to take those small steps toward the big idea. We can help you with multi-year capacity building in the ways that work best in your community, not some standardized template.

The RC&D in Eastern Iowa had grant funding to be spent and were looking for ways to spark their small towns into action over several months. They wanted to address their specific needs online and in person. Becky delivered a series of educational webinars that supported businesses reopening post-pandemic. Deb visited several of their smaller communities in person and delivered customized follow-up presentations.

The director of the Limestone Bluffs RC&D Lori Scovel said “Both of these professional women were extremely knowledgeable, helpful, detail-oriented, and genuinely cared about results. I would strongly recommend working with Deb, Becky, and all of the resources available through SaveYour.Town.”

Economic Development board in Jones County, Iowa

Call us when you’d like to join forces to better serve rural communities

For organizations and professionals serving rural communities, when you want to join forces to serve small communities better, add our rural expertise to your projects.

Your member organizations can receive personalized training and support for their rural communities. They could have access to tailored assistance that meets their specific needs and challenges. By collaborating with us, your consultants will benefit from on-the-ground community engagement and gain valuable insights from our Survey of Rural Challenges, which can enhance the impact of their projects. You can enhance your conferences and events by adding a single rural workshop or an entire track of small town content we can curate for you.

The International Economic Development Council brought us to their annual conference to lead an interactive workshop on the Idea Friendly Method with their rural members. Alexa Schultz from IEDC said “Thank you both so much for your preparation and execution of your session today! Your preparation and professionalism were reflected in your session. I appreciate your adaptability as well.”

Becky McCray and Deb Brown presenting at the International Economic Development Council Annual Conference

This year you’ll also have access to more free tools.

Start with our free weekly newsletters to address challenges, spur action, and inspire readers like you.

Sundown Texas Library shared how they took our inspiration and took action: “We will be ringing in the new year in a renovated, previously vacant building because of the inspiration your newsletter validated! Ideas people have are sometimes too “dreamy,” but we will have a library three times as large and definitely more of a hub because of #IdeaFriendly grassroots organizations like yours. Thank you for helping us to save our town from post-covid slumps and giving it a revitalization that we needed!”

Read about the new library here.

Get your own inspiration with our newsletter!

Helping you along the way to building unified communities, treating each other fairly, and opening up opportunities to more people

Over the past few years, we’ve used themes to unify what we share with you.

2021: Building community despite divisions

Bringing people together across divides is the best thing you can do to rebuild the fabric of your community.

2022: Building fair and unified communities

Creating more fairness into what you already do and opening opportunities to a wider range of people unifies communities.

2023: The Idea Friendly Way is the easy way: Open opportunities to more people

Opening opportunities to more people by helping them use the easier ways.

In 2024, we’re here to work alongside you. You’re not alone, and you don’t have to figure it all out for yourself.

What this means for you, your community, and the world

The small towns that thrive into the future will be the ones that are open to new ideas. The power to act is in the hands of all the people now, including you.

Throughout this year and always, we teach you the method that unleashes the power of everyday people like you to take action. Little by little, action rewrites people’s programming and values in positive ways. And that is how we all are going to do our small part to rebuild the fabric of our communities and countries together.

Pass it on

Thank you,

Reach out to either of us.

Becky McCray Becky@SaveYour.Town

Deb Brown Deb@SaveYour.Town