Dunn County
Report date
August 2017
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The most important aspect of our work in the past year has been to bring on board the communities we had identified at the beginning of the project. A key to community acceptance of the project was finding the right people in each of the communities. In some cases, our key person was a Chamber of Commerce director, in others, it was an economic developer, in one it was a city employee, and in yet another, it was a community business leader. Regardless of the position in the community, it was the respect and clout they carried that enabled us to bring the communities on board and to engage the businesses in our efforts.
The second most important aspect of our work was to make in-person visits to each of the communities. Local businesses and service organizations were invited to attend, and in each community, local community members came together to learn about the program and participate in a mini-planning session to determine how they would implement the program. In some of the communities, we made personal visits to local businesses with the identified project leader in that community. This made a real difference in helping small businesses and local leaders understand the project. It also helped the local project leader to reconnect, and in some cases, connect with his/her business community, as well as begin the education process with their local government leaders. The community meetings helped us establish a network of resources that would become quite valuable throughout the grant period.
The ongoing support we have provided to the communities has been invaluable. This support is in the form of social media and blogs, a model government purchasing policy, graphic design services, table tents for business and government education, weekly connection with each community, a retail leakage survey, a Shift 10% (of out of trade-area spending) pledge, and a project website. The website is used not only by the project communities but by others that have learned of the project. We developed a policy for local procurement that can easily be inserted into a city or county policies. We have invited other communities to use our materials for any local campaigns they may implement on their own. While we did not target the larger communities in the region, Dickinson, Williston, and Minot have taken advantage of different articles and resources that have been posted on the website. By encouraging this inclusivity, we believe the campaign will be strengthened throughout the entire region. Finally, all communities were invited to at least one of three workshops on “Localism: How to Engage Your Community” conducted by Kimber Lanning, executive director of Local First Arizona.
Key lessons learned
Our “Shift 10%” pledge campaign has not been as successful as we believed it would be. Our community partners have promoted the pledge and we promote the pledge in numbers of ways on the website, on Facebook, and in personal contacts. We weekly post the five counties having the greatest number of pledges and we have promised an incentive to the program that generates the greatest number of pledges. Pledges came in at the beginning of the campaign, but as it has progressed, the numbers of pledges have greatly reduced. We believe this has something to do with summer. North Dakotans want to spend as much time as possible outdoors in the summer and it is questionable how much time they take outside of their workday to be on the computer. We have requests from the communities to regenerate the pledge for the fall and winter to coincide with holiday messaging and campaigning.
We learned early in the year that key government leaders and agencies have been difficult to get on board with the campaign. The verbal support provided by the city and county government leaders has not necessarily transferred to actual support by putting procurement policies into place for purchasing locally whenever possible. Many of our community project leaders are not inclined to bring the issue of local procurement before their jurisdictional bodies and, in some cases, have asked us to do this for them. We are quite insistent, that while we can assist, the issue of local procurement must come from within the local community. This is not to say that all jurisdictions fall into this category. At least three of our community jurisdictions are quite vocal about local procurement whenever possible, and we will ask these jurisdictions to influence other communities and counties.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
Resourceful – The concept of “localism” is new to most of our western ND communities. They understand “buy local” and most have implemented these campaigns over the years. They have not, however, looked at localism through the concepts of “eat” local (local foods), “live” local (volunteerism), or “be” local (incorporate all things local into the culture. We have introduced resources that have helped the local project leaders educate and incentivize their communities to embrace the wholeness of “localism.” This concept requires systemic change in a community, and change is slow. However, we are beginning to witness an increased acceptance from residents. One of our most resourceful and collaborative efforts has been with local community foundations, which we have begun to work together with to promote local “giving.” Some of the communities have incentivized local volunteering and giving with community “bucks,” an entirely new concept for western ND communities. This concept of “localism” will ultimately improve community engagement and sustainability.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Engagement is an important element of this project. Without the engagement of the community and its citizens, it is difficult to address the three elements essential to community innovation. We have suggested that front desk personnel – retail checkout people, bank tellers, receptionists, etc. – engage their customers/clients about what it means to be local. Even something as simple as a “thank you for being a local consumer” helps a person feel more engaged. Understanding of Place Value is a key component of community sustainability. Increased access to locally produced and locally offered goods and services, improved food security, and stronger and more diversified business and entrepreneurial activities will create a resilient and sustainable community.
Understanding the problem
It has become evident to us that people really do not understand the impact buying local and giving local has on their community. As an example, the wife of a police officer was thrilled she had made such good buys on Amazon and was seemingly mortified to learn that the sales tax from local shopping helped pay her husband’s salary. Community education has become an essential component of this project. We also realized that our definition of “local” is sometimes different than our small communities’ definition of local. As an example, Shopko (a small Target-like corporate store) is considered an essential “local” hub store in the communities where Shopko exists. In addition, we have had two of our communities turn their “local” campaign into a county-wide campaign, encompassing several small towns. We have had to accommodate each community’s definition of what is considered “local.”
If you could do it all over again...
At the outset of this project, we anticipated that communities would be clamoring to come on board with this project. We did not realize we would have to be so proactive with community outreach, thinking the communities would reach out to us with ideas for their unique local needs. However, as identified in the answer to Question 6, if people do not fully understand the impact this project can have on their communities, they do not know what to request. Secondly, we wish we had not implemented both the Retail Leakage Survey and the Shift 10% Pledge at the same time. Most people didn’t fully understand there were two different things going on and either chose to participate in only one, or they became overwhelmed with what we were asking them to do and they chose not to participate at all. We now know we need to revamp both and concentrate on only one online participation tool at a time.