Dunn County
Report date
August 2018
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
We held informational events featuring national Localist expert, Kimber Lanning. Lanning met with businesses and government agencies in three strategically located communities in the Vision West ND region to maximize attendance from our nine pilot communities. Her sessions motivated business owners, governmental agencies and supporting entities with a vision for how a “Go Local” campaign could expand local economic clusters, support local businesses in expansion and retention, and help residents and businesses feel more connected to their community. Understanding how “Go Local” campaigns had revitalized community and economic development in communities around the country provided a level of confidence in each community to move forward using the basic principles of growing a local economy, while leveraging their unique circumstances and assets.
The one-on-one 'Go Local' kick-off planning meetings in each participating community were well attended and received by business owners, Chambers of Commerce and Business Associations, and Jobs Development Authorities (JDAs). Attendees learned more about how to leverage their localness and what the economic and social impacts of supporting each other in their local communities could provide over the long term. They were able to coordinate and plan with each other, learn more about each other’s businesses and the support available to them through this project. Data supporting the economic impact of 'Go Local' campaigns, along with basic marketing materials, talking points and social media support helped each community, especially the directors and board members of the chambers/business associations and JDAs. The development of “Shift the way you shop” campaigns encouraging a 10% increase in local spending by residents and businesses helped participants feel they had a reasonable but impactful goal that they could sell to their communities.
We asked each community to provide at least one report-out presentation of local successes in their communities. We held semi-annual networking/technical assistance meetings with the participating communities, and we asked each to present their problems, solutions, and community campaigns to the Vision West ND consortium. Giving each community a group and an individual spotlight kept each community team motivated. These meetings and consortium presentations allowed each community team to talk about what was working, what was not and to share ideas. It also provided Vision West ND an opportunity to spend face to face time with these teams to trouble shoot and to help them develop individualized solutions.
Key lessons learned
Vision West ND learned that businesses and residents are eager to support local businesses when possible, and we learned they are willing to spend a little more to do so. The most difficult part of the process to get to that point, however, was for businesses to accept outside help. Inherent western North Dakota culture almost mandates that residents/businesses/communities do not share their problems outside their own 'family.' To accept help likely meant they had to agree they needed help, and in some cases, that was a humbling experience. it required some change in practices. We know that change is difficult, and this project required the business and community work with social media, social marketing tactics, and an understanding of just what 'localism' meant. It was difficult for a town to understand that the 'local' Shopko store (a regional, corporately owned, regional retail outlet) that was so important to keep their residents shopping in town, was not a locally-owned business. It took time to help them understand the important benefits of a locally-owned business. Once residents understood the difference, it became easier for them to shift part of their spending.
We learned that Chambers of Commerce, Business Associations and JDAs are stretched too thin, lack capacity to implement effective marketing strategies, conduct and analyze consumer surveys, and spend one-on-one time with businesses. One of our community teams consisted solely of volunteers; one community had a Chamber director that worked 20 hours a month and volunteers did the rest; one economic developer spent one day a week in the community - she lived elsewhere, and when she wasn't there, no one else did the work; one JDA director worked part-time as a developer and part-time for the County. One Chamber director worked part time for the Chamber and part-time for a local business. Only four of the nine communities had a full-time Chamber director or economic developer and only one of those had more than a one-person office. Once we learned this, we quickly realized we needed to help them with their community education, teach them to utilize the 'Go Local' campaign's website and social media page more often, and reach out to learn not just from the project management and staff for assistance, but also to each other. We also needed to teach them how to maximize volunteers.
We learned that engagement and support from city and county commissions was severely lacking. While elected officials were very accepting of the project and promoted it to their community residents and businesses, they did not necessarily follow the practice of shifting their acquisition and spending to their own community businesses. They promoted 'shopping local' because it brought additional sales tax dollars for use with public projects and their general budget. However, when it came to their own spending, most of the communities we worked with have a procurement policy that prevents them from accepting anything other than the 'lowest bid.' Unfortunately, this was not learned until late into the project - a time too late to mount a good campaign to teach cities and counties what their dollars - even 10% of them - could mean for local businesses and local people who work and shop there.
Reflections on the community innovation process
Increasing collective understanding of the issue was, and continues to be, the most important process of our work. The concept of 'Go Local' or 'localism' is a difficult one for rural, concrete thinkers to grasp. Over and over again, we heard that 'WalMart IS local - they hire local people.' The concept of how shopping local transforms into the local Little League having local sponsors or the church being able to send youth on a mission was, collectively, a very difficult concept to grasp. Or the concept that two grocery stores in town is more beneficial than one - with only one, people will leave town to shop elsewhere when they don't find what they want; two, on the other hand, will keep shoppers going between stores to buy what the other doesn't have. The concept of collaborating with competitors instead of competing took time to grasp. The ability to be flexible in working with each community and using the entire process on a community level was the most valuable lesson learned. Each community has different capacity issues so using as many of the elements of the process as possible was important for the overall project.
Progress toward an innovation
We are well on our way to achieving innovation in several of the nine communities. The project goal of shifting 10% of purchases to local resulted in a 10.3% increase in sales tax returned to their communities from the base year to the end of the grant period. Community capacity is still an ongoing challenge, however. Those with staff have built more capacity than those that must rely more on volunteers. To achieve a full breakthrough throughout the region, rather than with a few pockets of the region, we need to move beyond the 'pilot' concept into a region-wide effort. To do that, we need to continue increasing the collective understanding of the issue through our education and resource development processes. While this project concentrated on mid-sized rural communities, it is essential that we continue to generate ideas for communities of all sizes. Even the smallest of towns can become more sustainable if they embrace the concept of 'localism,' and the larger communities must learn how to be good stewards of their own local resources. Of utmost concern is that elected officials and county and city auditors become engaged in the testing solutions.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
We have certainly not yet met our goal of achieving regional sustainability. To be most effective, we must continue to help communities understand how to use economic clustering to leverage what is readily available - agriculture and energy. We must help them understand the importance of moving from an economy solely reliable on commodities to leveraging those commodities into sustainable economic clusters. The only way we will ensure that happens is to have greater engagement with community leaders and elected officials. It will also be important to help communities understand how to incorporate local food businesses into the local business economy, and in order to do that, we will need to encourage connections between local food producers and businesses. And for our Native American communities, helping them promote their own 'localism' and teach them that working with already established local, independently owned businesses can help attract Native-owned businesses. We are moving forward, but we are not yet where we need to be to achieve regional sustainability.
What's next?
We considered this a pilot project. We have had enough success and learned enough from this project to implement it across the Vision West ND region. We plan to address the lack of engagement and collective understanding, particularly of city and county government, in economic clusters, value of place, and leveraging localness to grow community economies. We plan to help the region understand economic clustering, which will reduce the gap in municipal and county participation. We plan to use the newly formed Dunn County Business Association as a model for our most rural counties with small populations, but with businesses in each community. In essence, we plan to help these communities understand that working together is far better for small towns than trying to compete with the larger community(ies) in the county. We plan to provide organizational and business training for small communities to teach them how to build business alliances, and we plan to help them understand that community branding helps build community place value.
If you could do it all over again...
There are two things we would have liked to understand better before we started. We assumed it would be easy to get elected officials “on board” and that our partners on the community level would be able to help us do that. We also assumed that the partnering communities had more organizational capacity than they actually had. If we had understood the challenge of getting elected officials on board and the lack of organizational capacity we would have altered our time and resources to build that capacity and governmental buy-in from the beginning. Instead we found ourselves working through employee turnover issues and tighter organizational budgets than we expected and as a result, did not achieve as much as we had hoped at the outset.
One last thought
This 'localism' or 'Go Local' project is essential to the Vision West ND region over the long-term. Without economic diversification - reaching beyond a volatile, commodity-driven economy - western North Dakota will not experience long-term economic sustainability. This project we have been implementing over the past two years has laid a very solid foundation to move toward that localized, sustainable model. Thank you for giving us that opportunity.