Ecosystem Builder Interviews

By this point in 2020, I think we can all agree that times are tough. 

Across the United States and around the world, small businesses have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic — with even greater impacts on Black, Latinx, immigrant, and female business owners. 

But even in the midst of crisis, there is opportunity. A chance for us to come together as communities, to innovate, and to collaborate on finding solutions to the most challenging problems facing our world.

That’s why we reached out to some of our favorite rural ecosystem builders and get their take on what’s going on across rural areas in the United States. Today’s wisdom comes to us from our friends at First Southwest Community Fund.

We asked two questions:

1. What is the biggest opportunity or challenge your organization sees, in this particular moment in time? 
2. What advice would you give to our communities to help them either take advantage of this opportunity or thrive despite the challenge?

So without further ado, take it away Cass!

Cass Walker, Executive Director at First Southwest Community Fund

Listening to your stakeholders has always been the most important thing any organization can do, but in these unprecedented times listening to what small businesses need is crucial for their survival. 

Needs are changing daily, and the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our communities and businesses in ways we did not foresee. 

Understanding the challenges – and then acting to help mitigate the effects – is vital for organizations like ours to have an impact in these difficult times.

Challenges are everywhere at the moment – helping businesses survive shutdowns, building online platforms for communications, remote teams, keeping employees healthy and well in this new “normal”…  

However, at First Southwest Community Fund we’ve also seen a number of opportunities during this unique moment in history. Together with our partner, First Southwest Bank (a CDFI), we’ve worked tirelessly to get assistance to rural Colorado businesses. 

In times of crisis, people can be incredibly resourceful and innovative, and re-focusing on who and what is important for our economies to thrive is paramount. We’ve chosen to focus on supporting innovation, creativity, and supporting those who keep our economy alive.

Solving New Problems: Innovation and Creativity

Many people have ideas about how to pivot or change their business models to survive COVID – however, most of these innovations need capital to implement. 

Hearing the needs in our community to create new online platforms, find ways to deliver educational and health content safely, and change business models to provide new needed services, we created the Innovation Assistance Awards Program. 

Through partnerships with The Colorado Trust’s COVID-19 Response Fund, Startup Colorado, and the San Luis Valley and Southwest Colorado SBDCs, we have been able to provide small grants up to $2000 alongside technical assistance to bring these ideas to reality. 

To help make technology ideas easier to implement, we partnered with local media companies to provide discounted and tailored services. 

We partnered awards with workshops to increase knowledge and skills. To date, we’ve awarded 30+ Innovation Awards to small businesses and nonprofits in rural Colorado, and are scaling our program to serve more areas. 

We’ve helped a rural bookshop create an online marketplace for their products, a theatre take their educational programming virtual, and a restaurant launch a grocery delivery service for at-risk residents. 

This initiative has brought hope and optimism, as our rural small businesses continue to show their resilience to thrive during this crisis.

Keeping Our Rural Economies Alive: Early Childhood Care & Education

As an industry, early childhood care and education has historically been underfunded and underappreciated. 

In our rural areas, there was already a lack of access to early care and education, with nowhere near enough capacity to deal with the demand. 

In times of COVID-19, we have seen a huge impact on this ecosystem and a deeper understanding of how access to early childhood care and education is an economic development issue

Through support from The Colorado Trust’s COVID-19 Response Fund and working with the Early Childhood Council of the San Luis Valley, we were able to create a program to assist 14 women-owned licensed family child care providers across the San Luis Valley in Colorado with operating capital who collectively serve 141 children. 

It is vital to the economic recovery of our rural region that these providers stay operational. We do not traditionally do many grants as an organization, as we are typically focused on small business loans. 

However, in these times, new tools such as these micro-grants are needed to support the key organizations which enable our communities to keep their business alive – especially women-led businesses, BIPOC-led businesses, and for entities who were not eligible or able to receive PPP or EIDL.

Shifting Our Focus: Rethinking Entrepreneurship

In today’s ever-shifting economy it is vital for small businesses and nonprofits to rethink and redefine what entrepreneurship means to them. 

Whether that means simply working from home, shifting product delivery options, shifting products or services offered, or completely restructuring a business model, anyone can be an entrepreneur and can make a difference in their local economy and for their family during these times.

Many of our programs at FSWCF have been developed to help businesses and nonprofits make these shifts, including our Rapid Response & Recovery Fund, Technology Innovation Awards, Food Truck Loan Program, Rural Women-Led Business Fund, and Creative Arts Loan Fund.

Getting creative, working together, and finding ways to maintain your business and livelihood in your rural community is what will propel small businesses and organizations through this pandemic and make our rural communities stronger on the other side.

What’s Next for Rural Small Business?

It’s easy to feel like 2020 has us stuck in between a rock and a hard place. But as Cass and her colleagues at FSWCF show us, there’s a lot we can do to support our communities, small businesses, and entrepreneurs right now.

We may not know what the next 12 months will bring, but together we can begin to reimagine a brighter 2021.

This is the third in a series of interviews — stay tuned for the next installment! You can also catch up on the first and second interviews.

Across the board, 2020 has been challenging. Between the health and economic challenges placed on communities around the world by COVID-19, it can sometimes be hard to find a silver lining.

But every time we face a challenge there’s usually an opportunity buried within it — it’s just our job to reframe the situation and figure out how we can use the challenge to benefit our customers and communities.

That’s why we reached out to some of our favorite rural ecosystem builders and get their take on what’s going on across rural areas in the United States. Today’s wisdom comes to us from our friends at Communities Unlimited.

We asked two questions:

1. What is the biggest opportunity or challenge your organization sees, in this particular moment in time? 
2. What advice would you give to our communities to help them either take advantage of this opportunity or thrive despite the challenge?

So without further ado, take it away Ines!

Ines Polonius, CEO at Communities Unlimited

Social distancing is Rural America’s competitive advantage. Urban areas make up only 3% of the U.S. land area but are home to more than 80% of the population. 

Young people, now more than ever, want to come back home to rural places. Intentional entrepreneurial ecosystems will help.

On July 5, 2020, The Hill concluded that a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, economic uncertainty, and social unrest is prompting waves of Americans from large cities to permanently relocate to more sparsely populated areas. 

Coming Home to Rural

While a town deep in the Mississippi Delta may not see an influx of New York City executives any time soon, it may well welcome home young people who grew up there. 

COVID has demonstrated that many jobs are mobile. Economic insecurity has people looking for more affordable housing. In 2016, the median monthly housing cost in rural areas was $1,271 lower than in urban areas. This gap has only widened over the past four years. 

Social distancing is much easier when your closest neighbors might be cows.

So how do we in rural communities capitalize on our competitive advantage? Quality of life. 

The Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), a partnership of six organizations including Communities Unlimited, provides technical assistance and training to rural communities across the U.S. 

RCAP’s Rural Homecoming Toolkit provides strategies for attracting those with roots in a community back home. 

For decades rural leaders have been focusing on attracting corporations, not people. To attract people, rural places require vibrant local economies built on local entrepreneurs, who are often forgotten by state economic development policy.

Corporations vs Entrepreneurial Ecosystems

Through intermediaries like Communities Unlimited (CU), some rural communities are creating vibrant rural entrepreneurial ecosystems that support the growth of existing local businesses as well as budding entrepreneurs.

In Dermott, Arkansas, a predominantly Black rural community in the heart of the Arkansas Delta, a community leadership team has been working on just this. In this community of 2500, almost 36% of the residents live in poverty and have for more than 30 years. 

Leaders know how to navigate hurdles with creativity, but no one was quite prepared for the devastating challenges of COVID19. 

Beginning on March 23, 2020, the leadership team gathered virtually via ZOOM with CU’s community facilitator to continue planning its Entrepreneurship Extravaganza. 

This call to action inspired the grand opening of three new businesses: a barbershop, a boutique, and a shaved ice stand. All three launched in June by community residents while they and the rest of the country were in the throes of COVID. 

On the other side of town, leadership team member, Debra Williams purchased eight vacant buildings to revitalize the downtown and create an entrepreneurship hub. 

Through the partnership between Dermott’s leadership team and CU, the ecosystem has access to start-up capital in the form of microloans and intensive technical assistance. 

By creating an intentionally inviting and supportive environment for entrepreneurs through quality-of-life businesses, access to capital, an entrepreneurship hub, and technical assistance, Dermott and other rural places can welcome home those with roots there who want to start a business, bring their existing business, or telecommute.

Challenge or Opportunity — It’s Up to Us

During times of chaos, we all have a choice: stick our heads in the sand and hope things go back to “normal” soon… or pivot and do something different. Something better. Something to uplift and benefit the communities where we live.

We may not know what our new normal will be yet, but together we can start to chart a new path forward.

This is the second in a series of interviews — stay tuned for the next installment! You can also read the first set of interviews here.

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About Communities Unlimited: As a Rural Development Hub and Community Development Financial Institution, Communities Unlimited takes a holistic approach to ensuring healthy communities, healthy businesses, and healthy families in rural places and underserved neighborhoods in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. www.CommunitiesU.org

Unprecedented. It’s the word most likely to be used (and overused) to describe 2020.

For ecosystem builders and entrepreneurs across the globe, this year has presented unique challenges — from health and safety regulations changing the way we operate to economies in recession.

But along with the challenges come new opportunities. Every entrepreneur knows that when the status quo breaks, someone needs to be there to help people transition to what’s next.

That’s why we reached out to some of our favorite rural ecosystem builders and get their take on what’s going on across rural areas in the United States.

We asked them two questions.

1. What is the biggest opportunity or challenge your organization sees, in this particular moment in time? 
2. What advice would you give to our communities to help them either take advantage of this opportunity or thrive despite the challenge?

So without further ado, we’ll let four of them take it away.

Melissa Bradley, Co-founder at Ureeka

This likely comes as no surprise, but the biggest challenge we’re seeing right now is the impact of COVID-19 and the need for businesses to pivot. 

While this new reality has greatly affected the small business community, they are resilient and are turning this challenge into an opportunity by redefining their business to not just survive the economic downturn, but thrive during it.

The best action to take during this time is to identify what your ‘gaps’ are. This includes answering questions like:

• Which parts of the business have been negatively impacted? 
• Which parts can be maintained or grown? 
• What challenges do I have with my suppliers? 

When you can identify and understand your ‘gaps’ you can build a plan to fill them. 

A great example of this is pivoting your marketing strategy to align with where your customers are spending more of their time these days – online. If you previously did not have a large web presence, or any web presence, this may be an opportunity to ‘fill the gap’ so you can continue to reach new customers. 

Ureeka hosted a webinar at the beginning of COVID-19 outlining all of this which is still very relevant as businesses are starting to reopen. That recording is available to watch here.

Enoch Elwell, Founder of CO.STARTERS

We are in a time of transition, where the landscape of business and society is shifting significantly, rapidly, and in an unpredictable way. 

This is both the biggest challenge and opportunity for small business owners and entrepreneur support organizations, as there is a need to rethink and refocus everything from our products and services offered, to our messaging, our customer, and even the foundation of business models. 

Organizations that are slow to adapt or that have little runway to navigate this transition are languishing and dying. But those who are able to connect with the new market needs will be positioned well to thrive throughout this time and beyond.

Do everything you can to manage your mindset to shift from a mental perspective of anxiety and fear toward one of abundance and possibility. The opportunity is there if you look for it! 

Talk with your customers (or the people and orgs that you serve) to find out what their changing needs are. Then start small to find the little things you can do this week to move forward in shifting your model to meet the changing needs of your customers. 

Small achievable steps build motivation and momentum!

CO.STARTERS is also offering a 5-step framework to help small businesses with COVID recovery.

Nathan Ohle, CEO at Rural Community Assistance Partnership

As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to impact small rural and tribal areas across the country, the importance of small businesses and entrepreneurs has never been clearer. 

In the immediate aftermath of stay-at-home and safer-at-home orders, hundreds of thousands of small businesses closed their doors, some for good. 

For those that were able to move to online ordering, virtual service delivery, and in some cases, use this as an opportunity to build new markets, access to capital was of critical importance. 

In the past decade, rural communities have seen a disproportionate closure of community banks, making access to PPP loans and other capital sources that much harder. This issue will continue to be a driver of inequities for rural communities unless new and innovative sources of capital reach these communities. 

Some of the best stories coming out of COVID in rural areas are Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) who are now in some cases, working collaboratively with one another to serve and fund rural entrepreneurs and small businesses. 

Rural communities in total had not fully made up the losses from the 2008 Recession before COVID hit, and now are faced with a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.

Out of this crisis, however, comes great opportunity. 

Rural communities see higher rates of self-employment than the national average, and those businesses are more resilient the smaller the county they reside in. The path to prosperity and opportunity runs directly through small businesses and entrepreneurs. 

There is an opportunity to raise the voice of entrepreneurs into national conversations about the rural recovery from COVID, and to push for a more intentional focus on building capacity in communities and building the framework and ecosystems that allow for small businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive.

As communities start to think about how they might recover and flourish out of the COVID pandemic, it will be imperative to build capacity locally, to create ecosystems that support and attract small businesses. 

Ensuring that quality of life issues like access to water, broadband and other necessities are available is vital to attracting and keeping young leaders in rural areas. 

Understanding that they are not in this alone, and that there are support organizations across the country setting the table for innovators and entrepreneurs to grow and thrive in rural and tribal areas. 

It is time to start thinking creatively about how they drive new business opportunity, and to start telling the story of innovation that lives inside every small community across the country.

Ciara Thyfault, Senior Product Manager for NetWork Kansas

NetWork Kansas has seen a variety of challenges and even some opportunities. 

Since we provide many loan programs we anticipate a big challenge of ours may be to continue collecting payments in the coming months. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the first thing we did was offer options for loan deferrals as a way to assist with cash flow to our loan recipients. Many other lenders did the same. 

On the other hand, we had the opportunity to work more closely with the Kansas Department of Commerce to provide resources throughout the state. 

Our first program we initiated was the HIRE (Hospitality Industry Relief Emergency) Fund where Commerce allocated $5 million of bridge loans to hospitality businesses across the state of Kansas. NetWork Kansas administered the fund and within 48 hours we approved 346 loans. 

Our next program was Restart Kansas where communities could help us raise tax credits, allocated to us by Commerce. With the money raised, we gave a portion back to the community to establish a local Restart Kansas disaster relief fund and then a community could have the autonomy to approve loans to businesses affected by Covid-19. 

It has been quite a roller coaster ride learning to navigate all the Zoom meetings, learn about all the new resources popping up across the country, and unfortunately dealing with all the negative effects COVID-19 has had on businesses not prepared to adhere to the new rules and regulations or maybe simply didn’t have ability to be technologically advanced to keep up with the changes.

Ask the Ecosystem Builder: What’s Next?

As we enter the half-year mark on this pandemic, it can be hard to focus beyond just getting through the upcoming week. But as these leaders show, there’s opportunity to be found amidst the crisis.

We may not know exactly what’s coming next, but with the resilience and determination inherent to living in a rural area we can pioneer a new path forward, together.

This is the first in a series of interviews — stay tuned for the next installment! And to get involved as the RuralRISE community grows, be sure to sign up for our newsletter and monthly meeting reminders.