Get the Action Steps Video<\/a><\/p>\n The survey asks rural people what challenges they most want help with and what actions they are taking to address them. The results don’t match the common themes in media coverage and policy conversation around rural communities.<\/p>\n Top five concerns at the community-wide level this year are very similar to the results from 2017 and 2015.<\/p>\n “Losing young people” and “Downtown is dead” have dominated the top 2 spots in 2015, 2017 and 2019. \u201cNot enough good housing\u201d is a new entry that wasn\u2019t included as a choice in the 2017 or 2015 surveys. “No one shops in town” also appears in the top 5 in all three rounds of the survey.<\/p>\n Here is a graph of all the choices offered on the 2019 survey ranked in order of how often people chose them. (Click to see it larger<\/a>)<\/p>\n Almost \u00bd of those surveyed identified themselves as current or prospective small business owners. Here are the top five challenges they chose.<\/p>\n A new choice, \u201cCan\u2019t find good employees\u201d was chosen by over 50% of respondents making it the number one challenge. It replaced a previous choice, “Need help but cannot hire,” in the top 5.<\/p>\n “Marketing isn’t working” has been consistently in the second spot, and “Opening later hours without success” remains in the top 5 on all three surveys. Online competition moved up to 3rd this year from 6th in 2017 and 2015. Needing a business idea returned to the top 5 after dropping to 9th in 2017.<\/p>\n Here is a graph of all the choices offered on the 2019 survey ranked in order of how often people chose them. (Click to see it larger<\/a>)<\/p>\n A new question in 2019 asked people what they or their community are trying to address their challenges. The four choices ranked in this order.<\/p>\n Traditional economic development was the clear top choice with over 75%, and informal copying of ideas was chosen in over 50% of the responses.<\/p>\n When offered the opportunity to share more in their own words about challenges, what is working, or anything else, 389 people shared more. Their responses can be grouped into these general categories with both positive and negative themed responses.<\/p>\n Here are some of the individual responses.<\/p>\n Each community is different, and different people from within a single community can see the challenges and opportunities differently.<\/p>\n How diverse were survey respondents? An open-ended question invited people to say if there were ways they considered themselves diverse, and 278 people chose to answer. Some answered with their own personal diversity, but most answered about their community at large.<\/p>\n Over fifty percent more people said their communities were diverse than the number of people who said their communities were not diverse. Over 70 people said their community was diverse now or increasingly diverse. Another 43 responded with average or not sure; and 42 said no, not diverse or not applicable.<\/p>\n The top 5 most common descriptive answers were grouped into these rough categories.<\/p>\n The grouping of cultures and ways of thinking includes common perspective divides such as new vs. longtime residents, farm vs. town, city\/urban vs. rural\/small town, and full time vs. part time residents.<\/p>\n Gender spectrum and LGBTQIA diversity featured in over 50 of the responses. Diversity in income or class, disability, family makeup, religion, political views and military service were also mentioned.<\/p>\n Get the Action Steps Video<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You’ll find more information on the methodology, talking points for media and links to prior surveys at our Survey page<\/a>.<\/p>\n New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the\u00a0Guided Tour<\/a>. Like what you see?\u00a0Get our updates<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What small town people see as their biggest challenges And what topics rural people most want help with Wouldn\u2019t it be great if the people who say they want to help rural people would actually listen to rural people\u2019s own challenges?! That\u2019s why we created this survey! We use the results to create practical steps […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":13378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9,10,8,36],"tags":[121,524,157,48,597,523,311],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Survey-of-Rural-Challenges-square.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13396,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13395\/revisions\/13396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Surprise! Stereotypes didn’t hold up<\/h1>\n
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Rural Community Challenges<\/h1>\n
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![\"Question](\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Rural-Community-Challenges-graph-250x300.jpg\")
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Small-town Business Owner Challenges<\/h1>\n
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![\"Which](\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Rural-Business-Challenges-graph-300x277.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h3>\nWhat’s working<\/h1>\n
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In their own words<\/h1>\n
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Diversity in rural people and communities<\/h1>\n
More rated their communities as diverse than not<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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What next? Action steps you can take<\/h1>\n
![\"Deb](\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Survey-Action-800x452.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nUsing these survey results, Becky McCray and Deb Brown developed a special video of action steps you can take to shape the future of your town<\/a> or the towns you serve. There is no charge.<\/h3>\n
Press and Media Information<\/h2>\n