Among many critical issues facing small towns and rural areas is job development, especially the creation and growth of new businesses. Research shows that entrepreneurial activity is strongly associated with overall economic growth in a community or region. But the benefits of entrepreneurship, especially high-growth entrepreneurship, are not evenly spread throughout the U.S. Compared to urban and suburban areas, rural communities and distressed inner-city neighborhoods are home to fewer and less successful entrepreneurial ventures.
The Small Community Quarterly published by the National Center for Small Communities (NCSC) focuses on why and how to spur entrepreneurial development, especially the role of local policymakers in supporting and rewarding entrepreneurship. Every day, small city mayors, township supervisors and county commissioners make policies that directly affect small business development. “The Quarterly also provides these local elected officials information to help them become better managers and administrators, thereby giving them more time to focus on rural development work,” says Quarterly editor Faye Kann.
“The newsletter is published in hardcopy, and electronically, and posted on the Web at www.smallcommunities.org,” says Kann. Hard copies are distributed to the office of every U.S. senator and representative, congressional rural caucus members, national rural network members, the National Association of Towns and Townships (that makes it available to its 55,000 members) and to those who subscribe. For a free subscription to the electronic newsletter go to www.smallcommunities.org.
A W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to the National Center for Small Communities to inform and educate policymakers on critical rural issues has supported the Small Community Quarterly since the fall of 2003. For more information about the NCSC visit http://www.natat.org/ncsc/Default.htm.
