March 2004 Volume II, Number 1

In this issue:

-- letter from new MRP President
-- BizPathways Network update
-- Broadband Project news
-- Rural Summit Save the Date - August 18-20, 2004
-- "Team Rural" in the works

LETTER FROM JANE LEONARD

I am honored and humbled to be asked to serve as the new President of Minnesota Rural Partners, our state’s rural development council. Marcie McLaughlin, MRP's founding executive director, is already in Washington, D.C., where she will be a strong and experienced voice for rural policy for all of us working and living in rural America. She is the new Director of National Policy Programs for the Rural Policy Research Institute – http://www.rupri.org – a longtime ally of rural people and places everywhere. This week, along with MRP staff members Tina Panitzke and Kelly Peterson, Marcie is managing a rural poverty research agenda-setting conference that RUPRI has organized.

Marcie suggested to the MRP board that the new Executive Director be called President, and while I have already received election year wisecracks, I take to heart the change in both nomenclature and spirit. Heaps of thanks go to Marcie for her incredible leadership over the past nine years. Alongside founding members, she took MRP from an idea to a nationally-recognized agent of change and rural advocacy, supported by hundreds, if not thousands of people across Minnesota who see and act upon the seismic shifts in rural America. MRP has always been proactive towards those shifts, whether it is gathering together the organizations that now serve as stewards of the Minnesota River, or starting the first Minnesota Rural Health Association, or using the power of the Internet to organize and accelerate entrepreneurial development (http://www.bizpathways.org).

Nine years of MRP growth have slipped past us like prairie wind. Now, like the wind turbines on Minnesota’s western borders, we need to harness that energy in what I consider MRP’s period of stabilization. MRP began as a non-entity, a loose confederation of people and organizations whose interdisciplinary rural connections could tear away red tape and make common sense improvements where and when it was needed.

Today we are more clearly an established non-profit organization. We continue to connect local, state, and national resources to help rural people and places thrive. We recognize that Minnesota's regional organizations – such as the Initiative Funds, the Regional Development Commissions, and the University of Minnesota’s Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships – work on unique regional challenges and opportunities. The Minnesota Association of Small Cities and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Small Towns at the Morris campus look out for the local level, with wonderful tools such as GIS mapping. The Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter provides non-partisan academic research for policy-makers on a host of rural issues, from internet use to diversity to health care. MRP works with all these organizations and more as it takes a statewide rural advocacy perspective with an eye on national policy trends that may affect us here in Minnesota. We develop or lift-up processes and tools that can be applied at any level, although we tend to target our help to the small communities and very small businesses that give our state its heart and soul (and in the case of small business – is where most of the new jobs are created).

For instance, our broadband promotion project helps towns of 2500 population or fewer (75% of the towns in Minnesota) develop strategies to gain market strength that will sustain their broadband investments. Broadband is increasingly critical to staying competitive in a global environment. Our community entrepreneurial champion program encourages on-the-ground support and on-line organizing of resources to accelerate business development – a grow-from-within strategy that lessens the dependence on riskier industrial attraction models of economic development. And we continue to gather people and organizations to create the annual Rural Summit – an unabashed rendezvous in the pioneer spirit that showcases rural resilience and innovation. Save August 18-20, 2004, for the annual get-together, this year to be held in Hibbing.

We will be publishing this newsletter every month. Please send us news, ideas, and comments. My colleague and friend, Deb Miller Slipek, formerly with USDA Rural Development, will be volunteering some time with us adding her extensive knowledge bank to these pages and other projects, such as the annual Summit. We hope we can count on each of you, too, to become local correspondents, in the fine tradition of the weekly small town newspapers that keep community front and center in the minds of current and former residents.

I know the importance of community correspondence. My first job out of college was as a feature and sports writer/photographer for the Norman County Index, 25 years ago (time flies when you are working in rural development!) in Ada, Minnesota. From that job to this I have worked to lift up rural life as a foundation of our democracy. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson credited rural sensibility and resourcefulness as being essential to our creation and survival as a nation. This year is the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition across the Louisiana Purchase and through the Northwest – the heart of rural America. I pledge to each of you that I will work to keep the spirit of discovery alive, and that MRP will continue to hold up rural as a cornerstone for Minnesota innovation and progress in the 21st century.

--Jane Leonard
MRP, Inc. President
jleonard@minnesotaruralpartners.org

BIZPATHWAYS NEARS END OF FEDERAL GRANT FUNDING

As of April 1, we will be instituting a modest subscriber fee for BizPathways Network services (www.bizpathways.org). The online business development organizing system got its start in October 2001 as a U.S. Department of Commerce, Technology Opportunity Program grant recipient. Users of BizPathways have enjoyed free services since its inception. The three-year grant is nearly drawn down and to keep the service operating, we will begin charging for value-added services on both the entrepreneur user side, and the service provider side. Without such user fees, the BizPathways services will cease to exist. We have not decided on the fee level yet, as we continue to seek additional sponsors that might help lower costs. If you would like to sponsor BizPathways, please contact Jane Leonard at jleonard@minnesotaruralpartners.org or call at 651-645-9403.

Current registered users and service providers will remain registered free of charge for six more months, until October 1, 2004 – the day after the grant period ends. New users of BizPathways (people and organizations who register as of April 1, 2004) will need to decide on the level of service they wish to obtain, and pay accordingly. Check out http://www.bizpathways.org and http://www.financeavenue.org for more information and to register before the free service period runs out.

BROADBAND PROMOTION PROJECT UPDATE

Bill Coleman continues his fine work with the nine rural communities that were selected to receive assistance in creating market strengthening and application strategies for broadband communications. Broadband is high-speed and high-capacity internet. Its availability and use are increasingly essential in keeping businesses competitive, and in helping schools, government, and health care facilities connect to advanced services provided through distance learning, e-government, and telemedicine.

MRP has a broadband marketing guide now available based on some of the experiences of the nine pilot communities and best-of-practice examples from around the country. Last month, representatives of the nine communities met with counterparts in Nebraska and Iowa via videoconference facilities at Onvoy to share ideas.

Check out http://www.minnesotaruralpartners.org/broadband for more information. Please thank our sponsors for their financial and technical assistance: Blandin Foundation, Community Technology Advisors, Onvoy, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers, and accessE.info of the University of Minnesota Extension Service.

SAVE THE DATE – RURAL SUMMIT 2004 – AUGUST 18-20, HIBBING, MINNESOTA

Planning is underway for the seventh annual Rural Summit, to be held August 18-20, 2004, in Hibbing. We are partnering with many organizations across the state and in the Northeast region, in particular the True North consortium of northeastern Minnesota http://www.truenorth.mnscu.edu/. If you are interested in helping with the 2004 Summit, please contact Tina Panitzke in the MRP Redwood Falls office at tpanitzke@minnesotaruralpartners.org.

STAY TUNED FOR “TEAM RURAL”

Rural Americans need all the allies we can muster as we work to lift up the true and changing state of rural America. MRP is working on a program called "Team Rural" to embrace and harness the rural in all of us. We wish to call upon anyone, anywhere, with a special affinity for rural people and places to join us in raising the visibility and importance of rural in all of our lives.

Look for more information upcoming about "Team Rural". When it comes to rural, we’re all part of the team.

Check out our calendar of events

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