Each year, we have a theme at SaveYour.Town, focused on you and your communities. Last year was Helping You Along The Way. And we are still helping you along the way! Our focus is always on rural communities and what we can do to strengthen, support, and help them grow.
At SaveYour.Town, we’re kicking off 2025, focusing on building community, collaboration, and resilience. This year’s theme fits in with your needs, our work, and our fast-changing world.
Coming Together for Stronger Communities
Our new theme, “Coming Together for Stronger Communities,” reflects our ongoing commitment to rural areas and our belief in the power of collaboration.
Here are just a few ways we are helping you.
We are forging new collaborations to serve you better.
Our webinar, 10 Years of Rural Insights, is a collaboration with Andrew Button from Mashup Lab. Andrew shares the key insights you need to support more small businesses in your community. We share the trends, changes, and practical actions you can immediately use from our Survey of Rural Challenges.
This year, we are on the advisory group helping shape the Rural Retreat hosted by the International Economic Development Council. We are offering insights we’ve gathered from you about what professional development works for rural economic developers. It happens June 23-25. Find more information here.
Dakota Resources has invited us to present a webinar on Cheap Downtown Placemaking to their Thriverr members. That event occurs on June 17 as part of their Thriverr Live programming.
Each of these organizations has programming that matches well with the work we do. Look for more collaboration between us.
These partnerships are just the beginning. We’re actively seeking more collaborations to enhance our support for rural communities. If you’d like to talk about possibly working together, reach out!
Results from the Survey of Rural Challenges
For the last ten years, you’ve told us about your challenges and your assets. Some things consistently show up, and others are new. We will share these results all year and hope to be at in-person conferences or with Infographics in their display areas. Your challenges also show up in our weekly newsletters, where we share stories of how other communities handle them and suggestions also. Take a look at what you’ve told us over the last 10 years!
Another resource: Deb’s book
Have you seen Deb’s new workbook?? It’s called “From Possibilities to Reality: Save Your Small Town with these Uniquely Do-able Ideas, Projects, and Success Stories,” and offers practical strategies for community leaders and entrepreneurs. It’s already been adopted by several conferences as a resource for attendees.
The Idea Friendly Method
This year and every year, we rely on the Idea Friendly Method, a proprietary method developed by our own Becky McCray. It helps people and communities address their challenges. We help you use it to:
- Empower small towns to take ownership of their future without waiting for external funding or top-down mandates.
- Encourage participation by everyone, which is crucial in times of economic uncertainty.
- Provide actionable tools for building trust, fostering collaboration, and testing ideas quickly.
We’re recommitting to all the other ways we support stronger rural communities.
- We participate in an average of one to two presentations, events, conferences, or community visits per month to connect with you and the realities on the ground.
- We maintain and update our library of existing online training resources and membership for you.
- We continue to publish practical ideas for you in our newsletters weekly by email and on LinkedIn.
- We appear on podcasts, radio, and other media interviews throughout the year to get the word out to even more rural folks.
