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

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”…

Polaroid framed photos of the flags of Canada, Australia and UK

International Survey of Rural Challenges answers

Australia, Canada and UK weigh in with assets and challenges Our Survey of Rural Challenges just wrapped up this week, and I want to share the preliminary results with you. This year, international people made almost 4% of all responses, based on what survey-takers volunteered about their locations. There were 13 from Canada, 4 from…

A family fishing from a canoe

Grow your own outfitters, take advantage of your natural resources

Our latest Survey of Rural Challenges said natural resources are our best rural assets, but you don’t have enough outfitters to take advantage of them as tourism development. Here’s how you can grow your own outfitters.  Both Deb and I visited Eastern Kentucky last year. I visited Estill County, and Deb was in Jackson County….

Chart showing answers to “Do you think your community will be better off in 10 years?” More than twice as many people gave a positive response (119) than were negative (50) about their communities’ future. Almost as many were positive (119) as were neutral (136).

Survey Results: Rural people are optimistic about their towns’ future

This is my favorite finding from our latest Survey of Rural Challenges: rural people are optimistic about the future of their community. In fact, they were twice as likely to say they were optimistic than negative about their community’s future! Over 300 rural people answered the question, Do you think your community will be better…