Rural Business HQ

Community newspapers have served rural areas for hundreds of years, providing news and useful information to small-town residents. Local editors and reporters attend meetings, sporting events, and other community gatherings and provide an ongoing account of what's happening in their town. Most papers are mainly supported by advertising dollars, but with economic struggles in many rural communities...

Grace Pshigoda and her husband Ashley have worked hard to renovate a historic building in their hometown of Spearman, Texas. They turned the top floor of the 100-year-old structure into a three-room bed and breakfast and are opening the main floor for community meetings and events. The process wasn't easy as the couple was told by a contractor the building should be condemned. They persevered thro...

Rachel Granstra is a young mom and business owner living with her husband, Brennan, and twin daughters in northwest Iowa. She's been in the region her whole life, benefiting from growing up in a tight-knit rural setting in a faith-centered home. She always knew she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and be able to stay home with her children. She has also always been an idea person and had...

Kristin Thompson's passion for plants and the empowerment of growing her own food started from a young age and has been calling her ever since. She believes it is one of the most grounding and self-empowering things a person can do for themselves and wants to share it with others through highly nutritious organic produce. Kristin has been growing food since 2012 and was an Organic Farm Intern at t...

Specialty Cheese Company is headquartered at a former high school in Reeseville, Wisc., population 679. The company is innovative in its growth and accommodating employees. Ten individuals are paid to drive staff from surrounding communities to work every day. The business is expanding, building a new child care facility for employees as well as local residents. The company grew from humble origin...

Madeline Moore is a young mom, rural entrepreneur and founder of Rethinking Rural , which is a network of engaged millennials working on rural issues at a national scale. In 2018, the Rethinking Rural invited 50 rural millennials to Port Townsend, Wash. to discuss how to improve rural communities. Three more symposiums are planned over the next three years. In this episode of The Rural Business Sh...

Vinder is a community marketplace for people to list, discover, and buy local produce - connecting community members to local growers. Founded in July of 2016 in Port Townsend, Wash., a rural Victorian art and seaport community, Vinder was originally launched on foot and bicycle by the founder and CEO, Sam Lillie. He would go door to door asking homeowners if they had a home garden, if they ever h...

Every Career and Technical Education (CTE) class at Lincoln County High School (LCHS) in Hamlin, West Virginia is a Simulated Workplace. The classes cover a wide variety of professions – teaching, computer science, publishing and law enforcement, to name just a few. They run as businesses, taking on real-world projects that serve their communities.    Nestled in the town of 1,000, LCHS is one of t...

The new Simulated Workplace initiative in West Virginia's public schools is making a big impact on rural economies in that state. The West Virginia Department of Education worked with numerous businesses and industries throughout the area to design the program. This initiative helps schools implement a workplace environment in all Career and Technical Education classes. These classes run as a busi...

Brent Parton is the deputy director of the Center on Education & Skills at New America, a D.C.-based think tank. He focuses on education policies at the Center in order to build learning-based pathways to economic opportunity. He took time to speak with Rural Business HQ recently on rural workforce development, sharing his thoughts on what rural communities can do to prepare a workforce that will...

Silver City MainStreet fosters economic development in Silver City, New Mexico's historic downtown. The organization does this through collaboration and promotion of downtown events, improvements to and preservation of the historic district, and the development of new and creative uses for downtown buildings. Silver City MainStreet is a 2011 recipient of the Great American MainStreet Award, a nati...

The Rural Pathway Project (RPP) in New Mexico is assisting communities with building up their own tourism assets. Suzy Lawrence is the Tourism Development Coordinator for the New Mexico Tourism Department and recently talked  about the project and how rural communities can build their local economies through tourism. Rather than simply send money to communities, the project is a capacity-building...