Dunn County
Report date
October 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Vision West ND elected to set up and maintain a GoLocal!ND website and a Facebook page to keep the communities in western North Dakota apprised of the project. The website includes information about each of the communities that others are able to ask questions about and learn from. The blog articles are used by the communities to share on their own websites and with businesses within their communities. Research articles provide the background necessary for each of the communities to engage in and complete their own planning activities. We have been able to provide data, background materials, marketing information, and a place to share. The website and the Facebook page has been the catalyst for our communication, collaboration, education, and even our networking at times, especially as we have attempted to work our way through the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of our project was to offer in-person workshops for our community coordinators. COVID took that away. Instead, we had to rely on Microsoft Teams or Zoom meetings, and the website and Facebook page was the platform from which we could provide the information we presented.
The local foods initiative sparked a number of activities throughout the region. By working with the ND Department of Agriculture, Vision West ND had some significant influence in developing the North Dakota Local Foods Map. This is an interactive map that is populated with farmers markets; community supported agriculture locations; roadside stands; U-pick farms; producers of beef, pork, lamb, and poultry and eggs that offer individual sales; meat processors; grocery stores that sell local foods; and honey producers. Vision West ND consortium members reached out to their own communities to help gather information. Staff made telephone calls to all grocery stores in the region to determine the kinds of local foods they sell. Doing so allowed us to educate small town grocers about the need for local foods to support local communities. Now, all of these same people are able to populate new or updated information directly to the map. During our follow-up calls, we learned that several of those who have had their information placed on the interactive map have also reached out to others throughout the state to promote the map. The map is maintained by the Dept. of Ag. and is sustainable.
Local procurement policies had been sorely lacking within our subdivisions in western ND. This meant that most cities and counties were purchasing from the lowest bidder without any consideration for what local purchases could do for the community. Our procurement project was a tough area to crack. Cities and counties became very defensive when it was pointed out they were not helping their own budgets with sales tax returns to the government. While many promoted buying locally, most did not do so themselves. We researched and found several local procurement policies and/or resolutions from which we could develop templates of model policies or resolutions cities and counties could adopt. We had originally planned on holding procurement workshops for subdivisions, but Covid put a hold on those. Instead, we worked with our local coordinators to reach out to their own city and county to acquire data that could be used to provide education to leaders. While most were not initially receptive, we were, with diligence able to make procurement changes in four counties and three cities. We believe this is just the start and more will embrace the example modeled by those who changed policy.
Key lessons learned
Our first lesson was to learn how to pivot with many of the activities we had planned in person to figuring out how we could reach people remotely and virtually. This meant many of us had to learn new technology platforms and also train the recipients of our training how to do so also. We learned this would take time. We were not able to hold two community coordinator summits - we held one in-person and resorted to Teams for the second. This meant a shorter venue time. We were not able to hold our procurement workshops. Not only did we run into defensive issues, we also learned that cities and counties were dealing with the effects of the pandemic and had little time to participate in events we scheduled. So, we turned to our local coordinators to do as much as they were able. We learned that training trainers, in this world of Covid, worked far better than inviting many people to an in-person or virtual event.
While this did not create a problem for the success of the project, it is worth mentioning. Vision West ND developed a Covid meeting policy that was asked of all who worked with Vision West ND, including the GoLocal!ND project, to comply with. The policy 'strongly requested' that all who met in-person use hand sanitizer prior to entering the meeting and prior to eating. By policy, it required all who were meeting in-person to wear a mask and to socially distance. We found out very quickly who the 'anti-mask' people were. We asked those who refused to wear a mask to keep to the back of the room, and this created some animosity among some. Did this keep us from having success with the project? It did not. What it did do was to set people on the consortium apart from others, which did create some tension in some instances.
I am unable to determine a third roadblock to successful completion of our GoLocal!ND project.
Reflections on the community innovation process
Increasing collective understanding of the problem' was the most important and most impactful in working through our GoLocal!ND project. Rural people are concrete thinkers and change is very difficult. When the term 'go local' was introduced, people immediately thought we were asking them to quit shopping online or out of town, when we were simply asking them to shift 10% of their shopping, giving, and volunteering back to their own community. We had to find ways of helping people understand why this kind of change was important to the community's ability to provide services and remain sustainable. We developed a 'Shift 10%' campaign, a local procurement campaign, a 'Give Locally' campaign, and a Local Foods initiative. We educated people about the importance of supporting local producers, as rural communities cannot be sustainable without the support of local farmers. It is a symbiotic relationship that many did not realize. We had hoped to reach the problem solving stage, but we had some setbacks as a result of Covid. Despite that, we had great success in several communities. Our best success came in communities that were organized by committed leaders.
Progress toward an innovation
Despite the setbacks that occurred because of the pandemic, Vision West ND has made some real inroads into our GoLocal!ND work. New communities have joined the effort that initially included only eight communities. That number increased to 11 the second year and today we have 16 communities formally participating in the campaign. There are more that use the resources, but have yet to formally join the discussions. Almost all the counties and communities lost tax revenue after the downturn in oil production, but today, every one of the participating communities and counties have again seen increases in sales tax revenue returning to their coffers. Changing the attitudes of our subdivisions toward local procurement policies was difficult at best, but we did see some success with limited numbers. This is a good start. Our local foods initiative has been the most successful part of this project. We now have more small meat processing businesses, more farmers markets, more local foods options. The partnership with the ND Dept. of Agriculture was important in this endeavor. We still have work to do, but the future looks promising.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
There is still much to do with convincing local counties and cities to change their procurement policies to allow for local purchasing even when it might cost a bit more. This requires entities that do not have a policy in place will be required to do so. We found that many of the purchasing agents in the cities and counties became very defensive about their purchasing authorizations and when defensive, progress becomes difficult. We may need to find a different approach. One such method would be to engage the ND Association of Counties to assist in developing model language for the bidding and purchasing process. When a county is putting $400K toward the purchase of office furniture and makes the entire purchase from an out-of-state company instead of the local furniture store, the city and county lose. It is a matter of finding the best method of showing how the increase in returned sales tax offsets the reduction in purchase costs, and additionally, keeps the business open in the community. This will be a slow process.
What's next?
Utilizing the assistance of community stakeholders as mentors for those in other communities was a huge win for this project. Two of our community coordinators have become just that for other communities in our region. There is now a tremendous amount of information and campaign sharing among communities that did not exist before and we anticipate this will continue. Covid taught us alternative methods for meeting and sharing information. Beginning in January, we will begin a monthly virtual discussion group to continue the conversation and education related to this project. The website and Facebook accounts remain in effect and we will continue to add to them. We have developed a 'members newsletter' in addition to the normal Vision West ND newsletter, and this will help keep information flowing. All of the designated community coordinators remain in place and have pledged to continue the GoLocal! ND initiative. This project will be turned from a central administration-led project to a community-based project. This has always been the goal.
If you could do it all over again...
Looking back, it would have been hugely beneficial to have had a contingency plan for emergencies in place - how would we continue the project if we had to deliver it in a different way? How would we manage it if we could not hold our planned meetings and training sessions in the traditional format? Had we known we would be held 'in place' for over 18 months (and continuing), how would we have changed our plans? As it was, we had to do that 'on the fly' and while we were able to adjust, many of those we were working with were not able to do so as easily, which limited us even more.