For those of you that work in different organizations, chambers, and economic development groups that want to see your town thrive- I understand you have a budget. I get it, I’ve been there. You have to justify an expense to your board and explain why you think it is important. If they don’t understand what you’re saying, they often say no.
Let’s take a look at what a $300 investment annually with SaveYour.Town can do for your group. In order to do that, we have to determine how important your small town is to your organization.
- Do you want to see you town thrive? Not necessarily grow in the number of residents, but grow in more successful businesses, and an active downtown.
- Most people I talk to want to see their town thrive, but they are not sure how to actually do that. The Old Way of doing things is just not working anymore. Six white men in a backroom making all the decisions and writing the overwhelming plans for your town does not take the entire town into consideration. They often are only looking backwards to what it used to be, and not looking forwards to what it could be.
- Are your downtown storefronts all filled? Are there empty buildings in town? Are you having trouble bringing new businesses into your downtown?
- Filling buildings and storefronts, finding new businesses and helping them grow can be an exhausting process. Ask any economic developer who is chasing smokestacks to replace the factory that left. But what if you could learn an easier way, and have help using that way, to accomplish these goals?
- Is your organization serving its members as best as it can? Are you providing all the resources to them you could be?
- Providing members more creates better members and a better community. We all know that. What if you had more tangible reasons for more people to become members, and/or to become more involved willingly?
Now for the questions to propose to your board about why you might want to spend the $300 annually to have access to ALL of our videos filmed since we began. Not to mention the weekly newsletters from both of us, and answers to your questions you send us.
- Do you need more volunteers for your activities? Not the STP (same ten people) and not everyone on the board every time – but new and even younger volunteers.
- We’ve got a video for that.
- Do your businesses need help with marketing and promotion?
- We’ve got videos for that.
- Your downtown needs help, your youth are leaving, people are negative, empty buildings, and a new approach to economic development – are these needs in your town?
- In total we have 38 videos as of June 2019 and are releasing a new one every month. We address all of these issues. And we are releasing the third Survey of Rural Challenges to the world. We want to know what challenges small towns face so we can create content that works for our small towns..
- Is your board ensuring you receive professional development? Professional development helps the face of the company (you) keep up to date, relevant to the business, energized and creates the space for growth and improvement within the company.
- The videos and newsletters provide ongoing professional development. Access to both of us is also available, in short email questions. Or in a more structured consulting way. Both of us have worked with communities this way. And our backgrounds have given us the experience and training to answer or find answers to your small town problems.
- Have you received training in how to make your town Idea Friendly? Idea friendly towns are more open to change, have involvement by many in the towns success, and are creating possibility for everyone.
- Idea Friendly is the cornerstone of our work. We share how to be an Idea Friendly town. We talk about other communities that are Idea Friendly. We give you the steps you need to be more successful as a small town.
Present bias is the human tendency to weight what’s happening now twice as heavily as what might happen in the future. We all do it unknowingly. We ask that you work on changing that human behavior so that you can help your town thrive. Spending an equal amount of time on the future is most relevant to your growth. You can choose to be stuck in solving problems as they arrive every day, or proactive in creating a future that provides less problems.
Become a Megaphone Member. It’s $300 for one year. We know it’s not really about the money. Given that you want to see your community thrive and grow, this small amount is well, small. This is your opportunity to make a real difference in your community – you and your boards. Invest in yourselves, and your town.
The Idea Friendly Method is simply stated as
- You find your Big Idea and
- Gather Your Crowd around accomplishing that idea,
- You turn that crowd into a powerful network and Build Connections and then
- You and the crowd take Small Steps to accomplish your big idea.
