10 Years of Rural Insights. What small town people see as their biggest challenges and what topics they most want help with. Survey of Rural Challenges, report written by Becky McCray and Deb Brown. Challenges, assets, actions

Surprises in the just-released Survey of Rural Challenges 10 Year report

ByBecky McCray

In 2015, I decided to ask readers of SmallBizSurvival.com to share what topics they most wanted to learn more about. That grew into the Survey of Rural Challenges, collecting input from rural people all over about their challenges and assets. Looking through all 2200 responses, there are some surprises and some “yeah, we knew that” moments.

Yeah, we knew that. Youth out-migration, downtown decline, workforce shortages and small businesses struggling to market themselves still top the challenges. Those are our persistent challenges.

That escalated quickly. The lack of housing, childcare and small business support started low, but shot to the top and stayed there.

When did that happen? These built slowly and steadily: lack of usable business buildings, lack of volunteers, online competition for businesses.

We’ve got this. We have huge assets: natural resources, strong bonds, entrepreneurship, great people, and increasingly good broadband. And every time we ask about your challenges, you tell us you’re taking action. Every time. I love that about y’all.

We tried that once. Every kind of negativity, stifling new ideas, slowing down change, fighting amongst ourselves. These are the real barriers, and I wish I could say they are improving. They’re not, or not fast enough.

What do we do with this? We have action steps for governments, agencies, funders, media and local leaders. Check the report.

10 Years of Rural Insights webinar with us and Andrew Button

Right as we were finalizing our report, Mashup Lab Founder Andrew Button told us he was going to release his 10 years of data from working with rural entrepreneurs across the US and Canada. We decided to all share our results in a webinar on Wed Feb 26, 11:30am Central time. Deb and I will be reviewing the Survey highlights, Andrew will share his insights, and we’ll all be answering your questions. No charge. Learn more at 10 Years of Rural Insights webinar.