 |
| The Whiting Cafe gets a makeover, thanks to 100 community volunteers. Photo from Kansas Sampler Foundation. |
Community volunteers can make a big difference for small town businesses.
The first one I heard of was the Whiting Cafe Makeover orchestrated by the Kansas Sampler Foundation. One hundred volunteers descended on a tiny 25 year-old cafe for several days of much needed clean up and improvement. Read more about this in the Flyover People’s report, More From Whiting Cafe Makeover.
And I just read about Fitch’s Neighbors, at the Center for Rural Affairs. A group of 40 local volunteers helped update the grocery store inside and out. And they aren’t finished. They plan to make this an ongoing project and are working on the inventory system next.
If you could round up 50 volunteers, what local business would you help out? How could you help them? What if you helped a different local business each year? And what is stopping you?
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Are marijuana shops good or bad for small towns? - April 22, 2021
- Downtown is your town’s core: How to make your case - February 22, 2021
- Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
- In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
- Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
- How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
- The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
- Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
- Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
- Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
Wow! Quite a challenge: “what is stopping you?”
Well, we all have constraints and limits, Maesz. Sometimes it takes a challenge to make a worthwhile person stand up and get going.
A great idea Marci Penner came up with is called the “We Kan Bank.” You open an “account of need” at an online website – for example you need your exterior painted or could use some architectural advice. A person wanting to volunteer signs up in the “account of giving” as to what his talents or donation could be. Maybe an architect would like to donate a few professional hours or another person has painting experience and so on. This would all be accessible by going to the “Pump House” – you know those old drive in gas stations from the 40’s-50’s that nearly every town has – that has been converted to an information clearing house for the community. There a kiosk is available inside for anyone to input or extract information. A dream to come we hope but I think very doable.
WenDee, I love the idea of banking community needs and community assets!
What a great story! It’s so inspiring to read about businesses that are so well-loved by their communities that they can rally this kind of support. The business owners must have been doing something right for the last 25 years.
Carmen, you’ve hit on it. What makes this work is that the business owners have spent years making deposits in the community bank that WenDee was describing.