Find just the right topic in our video and audio archives.
Want to bring more life to your downtown after 5? Spur entrepreneurship with the Innovative Rural Business Models? Deal with the Committee of Negativity? We’ve got you covered, and more.
See the available topics here.
Go more in-depth with our online toolkits.
Have a lot of empty buildings you need to fill? Try a Tour of Empty Buildings. It’s a great way to get those buildings cleaned up and get the whole town talking about possibilities.
Need more activity downtown? Incubate tiny businesses with sheds (yes, sheds!) or a divided retail building. Build that pipeline of new businesses with pop-ups. Your sidewalks look better when they’re crowded with mini-businesses and happy shoppers. Revive Your Dead Downtown.
Want to make your town more open to new ideas? Get the Idea Friendly Method kit with videos, printable resources and more.
Organizations, you can license the toolkits and videos for multiple communities.
Each comes with all the materials to implement it easily in your towns. Pick your video or toolkit, then start the conversation here.
Organizations, work with us on a cohort program.
Bring together a small group of your own people to learn and implement together. You can use this with your own staff, or we can come alongside you to facilitate.
Learn to build Collaborations That Last, change your communities with Positive Action Groups and blue the line between business and community ideas with the Rural Action Cohort.
Bring us in for a keynote, workshop or speech.
Your event deserves real rural speakers who will fit right in with your people and still bring practical steps that work for small towns. We don’t just talk about rural issues; we live them. We’ve spoken at hundreds of events from the local to the international. Invite Becky for a keynote or Deb for an interactive workshop here.
Create change with onsite visits by Deb Brown.
More than just showing up to speak, we want to get to know your town. In Deb’s community engagement visit, she’ll spend quality time in your town, listening to as many people as possible about what they want in your community. Deb uncovers hidden stories, builds connections between people and helps you see the specific steps you can take to make meaningful change.
Discover rural assets and issues on our Survey of Rural Challenges.
What do rural people most want help with? Over 2200 rural people have shared their needs with us since 2015. Discover more and share the results of the Survey of Rural Challenges.
Search over 15 years of past articles for free.
We’ve been at this a long time, so we have a large archive of stories, photos, videos, podcasts and blog posts available for you to search through.
Read Deb’s newest stuff at Building Possibility
Read Becky’s newsletters here.
For how-to articles going back to 2006, read Becky’s rural small business stories at Small Biz Survival.
Add our voice to your story with interviews and guest posts.
We love to talk and write about small towns, and it shows. We bring passion to features on rural, business and community subjects. We’ve been featured on radio, on TV, in magazines and newspapers, in books from respected traditional presses and upstart non-traditional publishers, in academic research and university publications. If you’re working on a story or publication that could use an authentic rural voice or two, we’d love to hear from you. Get in contact to let us know what you need here.
Not sure where to start? Try one of these first ten steps
All kinds of people and groups want to know, ‘what should we do first?’ Check out the list of 10 things you can choose from, here.