Business incubators are based on a strong foundational premise: to give small and startup businesses access to what they need to survive and thrive.
Left to their own devices, entrepreneurs struggling to make payroll often have neither the expertise nor the connections to access the necessary capital, structure resources or professional mentoring that lead to success. Incubators centralize and consolidate those crucial collaborations and affiliations.
Like small businesses, small towns face well-known and predictable challenges to surviving, and often don't have access to requisite resources--and also don't have a holistic leadership structure in place to strategize or execute a plan.
Towns looking for a model, and inspiration, should cast a glance over Batesville way.
Chamber of Commerce CEO Crystal Johnson and local banker Phil Baldwin returned from New York recently, hauling home an American Bankers Association Foundation Community Commitment award for Citizens Bank's support of and contribution to the IMPACT Independence initiative.
Going back to 2015, which is as far as the ABA site lists, no Arkansas bank has ever submitted a winning, runner-up or even an honorable mention entry in any of the six award categories. That's a true testament to the innovation that distinguishes Batesville's IMPACT effort.
If we think of Batesville as a blueprint for a small-town incubator, several takeaways emerge for emulation.
Most community strategic initiatives are launched top-down, with decisions consecrated at the powers-that-be level, then foisted on the public for approval. Throw city/county politics into that hierarchy, and it's little wonder that working folks get frustrated and frequently lose faith in such plans.
In Batesville, the IMPACT planning bubbled up in genuine grass-roots fashion across the entire county, rising on a framework supported by a three-prong superstructure: civic leadership (chamber of commerce), higher education engagement (local colleges) and financial institution support (hometown banks).
Rather than town fathers and elders preaching from on high, the growth gospel of IMPACT was born from a broad cross-section of residents, including millennials and young families whose children's futures lie ahead of them. The people owned the planning process, and the four resulting subcommittees reflected their long-term interests: economic prosperity, educational excellence, tourism, and healthy living.
Every plan needs goals, so the IMPACT team created a community-wide survey to ask residents two main questions: identify topics most critical to the quality of life in Independence County, and rank the top five most important to them personally. To get maximum input, organizers made communication a constant priority. In addition to emails, traditional media, online posts and handouts, they walked along car pickup lines at schools and gave informational flyers to parents.
The outreach overemphasis paid off in spades. Ultimately more than 1,200 people responded to the survey, and 300 attended the initial community meeting in July 2015.
Fast-forward to today, and the word that most comes to mind is "wow." The downtown revitalization is magnificent, with the fully renovated Melba Theatre standing as a cornerstone to Main Street's new-but-still-historical vibe. Previously boarded-up buildings are open as businesses. Old dilapidated houses have been preserved and restored as legacy-rich residences.
Checked-off IMPACT action items are on display with new construction, commerce, venues, activities and events all around.
One of the most impressive achievements is also one of the most ingenious: an early-pay local scholarship program called Independence Promise.
Normally, secondary education scholarships are reserved till after a student gets his diploma. Independence Promise gives students an early start on launching their careers while still in high school. Eligible students from the area high schools can use the scholarship money to take college or work-force training courses while in grades 9-12. For students interested in technical or trade employment, that opens a pathway to go straight from graduation into high-wage jobs with certifications already in place--and without any student debt.
Every small town faces internal conflicts. Progress occurs when conversations are steered into grouped voices of cooperation and compromise. The IMPACT organizers saw that happen in the subcommittee meetings, where people who didn't normally interact with each worked out problems in a common-ground environment.
Most small towns are also squeezed financially, but another IMPACT lesson is that things don't take as much money as people may assume. The bottom line is, buy-in at the grass-roots level for a community plan translates directly to efficiency in implementation costs. There are a lot of state and national funding entities to aid enterprising communities, and unity in purpose around a well-conceived plan catches their eye and attracts their support.
IMPACT, essentially, was and is a declaration of Independence County residents that they have the right and collective opportunity to improve life in their community.
As with the American founding itself, uniting a local community requires overcoming competing interests, personalities and opinions by sharpening the focus on shared values and desires.
For small-town residents anywhere, IMPACT offers a powerful learning-by-example case study for successful self-improvement.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 11/30/2018