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Our Downtown Needs Help

Cheap Downtown Placemaking Ideas - $100 or less
The Tour of Empty Buildings video and audio
Reviving Your Dead Downtown
Filling Empty Buildings
Fill big empty buildings with Shared Spaces
Use Art to Build Community
Embedded Community Experience - See your town with new eyes
Bringing Life and Activity Downtown After 5
Our young people are moving away

Idea Friendly for Youth: Picture and Make the Change You Want
Build Youth Entrepreneurship
Connecting with Kids - Engaging with Middle and High School Students
Improving Rural Housing
Attracting and Retaining Youth - from school age to young families
Our businesses need help with marketing and promotion

Beating the Online Competition - small town retail tactics that work
Shop Local is worn out! What works today
Cooperation Creates More Customers - Getting local businesses to work together
Stories that Sell - How rural people can easily market their business and town
The Future of Retail - Action steps for small towns
People are negative or stuck in the past

The Idea Friendly Method
Idea Friendly Next Steps
Dealing with Negativity and Opposition
If Your Idea is Against the Rules
Seeing the Small Town Future - Positive rural trends
Change the Conversation - Why the Tour of Empty Buildings worked
We need more businesses, more jobs or a new approach to economic development

Rural workforce Trends
Equity in Rural Economic Development - Open opportunity to more people
Cheap Economic Development
Grow Your Own Entrepreneurs - the Innovative Rural Business Models
Survey of Rural Challenges 2021
Craft Entrepreneurs Create Prosperity - works in even the tiniest towns
Empty Lot Economic Development
Making Entrepreneurship Self-sustaining - Why training isn't the answer
Grow Your Food Business Ecosystem - expand the market for local foods
Rural Jobs Creation Strategies
We need more volunteers

Find More Volunteers - video and audio version
Get Businesses on Board video
Big ideas? Small Steps! - The most common mistake we see
Events They’ll Attend - Creating them together
Idea Friendly Officials and Boards - open to new ideas
Before You Write Your Next Plan
Resilience Videos

5 Top Topics for 2023
Building a Unified Community: Reaching and Rallying Everyone
Rebuild Community Ties After Disaster - Natural disasters or economic losses
2022 Rural Trends
Survey of Rural Challenges themes 2015 - 2021
Making Downtown Look Full (even when it isn't)
Refilling Your Business Pipeline video
Zoom Towns - Supporting Rural Remote Work
Placemaking Your Parks, Trails and Water: Building Community Stewardship - video and audio
Rebuilding Local Economy
Restarting Local Shopping
Food Builds Community: Addressing hunger, growing prosperity
Audio - listen on the go like a podcast

The Idea Friendly Method Audio
Idea Friendly Next Steps audio
5 Top Topics for 2023 - audio version
Placemaking Parks, Trails and Waters - audio version
The Tour of Empty Buildings audio version
Food Builds Community audio version
Find More Volunteers main lesson - audio version
Find more volunteers - bonus lesson audio version
Audio: Idea Friendly for Youth: Picture and Make the Change You Want
Improving Rural Housing Audio

Making Entrepreneurship Self-sustaining - Why training isn't the answer

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