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Lakeland Currents is
sponsored by Nisswa Tax Service. Nisswa Tax Service offers
tax preparation for individuals and businesses. Across from city hall in Nisswa and on the
web at Nisswatax.com.
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Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents. Where today we're talking
actually it's our 3rd series with my guest today Ben Winchester.
Who is a research fellow at the University of Minnesota extension and
does some very very interesting work. PPDoes a lot of his work inppMinnesota and
in Nebraska on rural issues. One of the things
that I've always found fascinating about what Ben's research is showing
is that it is really showing that we have ppa lot of misconceptions about
what's going on in our rural areas. As IPPsaid before Minnesota andppNebraska
are the two areas where he has spent most ofPPhis time. Today we are goingppto talk about
leadership and some of the things he is finding out about leadership
in rural areas. Welcome to the show again Ben. Ben: Thanks for having me
back Ray. Ray: It's nice to have you here you've always got really good information.
What would you like to start with. Ben: Well, I'd like to start with I guess that
the notion that social life is somehow dying in rural areas.
You know this really struck me years ago when we would talk about the apathy of the young
people and that we were having troublePPgetting elected leaders orpppeople to run
for elected or appointed positions. And we still see that
today. We see trouble getting mayors, trouble getting city council people.
So there is this notion that people don't want to be involved and that they
don't have a concern for civic life. But we've got a pretty rich history in
a number of ways across not just Minnesotappand the nation as a whole.
I'll draw back on a little bit of a history lesson here in that De Tocqueville,
when he started traveling around the U.S. especially the eastern seaboard.
He was very interested by the fact that Americans were very willing to create
social associations. So if they needed to build a church they would rise up
band together, build the church and disperse back out to the population.
And they did the same thing whether it was building schools or playgrounds
or having some type of active social activity in the community. People would band together
rise up and dissolve back. Well when I started
thinking about De Tocqueville's work today IPPthought when is the last timeppwe really
dissolved back. You know we've got a lot of groups in our communities and when people
come together to meet a challenge or if there is a problem that needs to
be addressed rarely to the people end up kind of being dissolved back to be tapped into
to later. So I started exploring some different data sources and
the first data source looked at just thePPnumber of cooperatives inppMinnesota.
People in Minnesota don't mind working together. There's a reason why
Minnesota lead the nation in the creation of cooperatives 100 years ago.
It's that is an advantage to having your private interest filled through
social activities and social bonds. So within Minnesota
we've got this very rich history of social life. And as I started to look more and more
at the data. I started to realize that not only is
there a great presence of non-profits and civic groups
in MInnesota but they've been growing at a pretty astounding rate.
For example between 2000-2010, Minnesota's
population went up about 8%. But overall the number of non-profits
in the state went up 20%. So this really
astounded me in the sense that I don't believe that social life is
dying if people are still willing to kind of band PPtogether and create all theseppnew non-profits.
So as I explored the little more the urban and rural differentials
there I noticed too that even in our rural counties where we experience
a 5% decline in our populations. We still see a 15%
increase in the number of non-profits.
So this for me is an indicator, that not only isPPsocial life alive but we'veppgot a lot of new people
moving into our communities and we've talkedPPabout this in previous showsppis this migration
of 30-49 years old moving in to our rural PPcommunities. And our in-depthppresearch is
showing now that these brain game folks these 30-49 year olds do
move into a community. If they've got kids they involve themselves
in leadership positions within the school districts especially. But they are also very
involved in being active in their own social interests.
And this is part of a larger I would say global trend especially within the US.
of becoming more individualized. So are wePPbecoming less social and moreppindividually
oriented in terms of our day to day activities
So what this means that people
are involved but they are involved in their own interests. Ray: When you're talking about
coops. Are you talking about everything from a food shelf to a
coop like an inititiave foundation that serves
5 or 6 county area.?So you are talking about the gammit of...
Ben: Really the early coops we still have themPParound today around telephoneppelectric coops.
You've got dairy coops. So that kind of PPhistory there. We've also gotppthis new
gen coop model that is taking place especially in the agricultural industry.
When we talk about foundations or kind of the regional development commissions
these would be more state agencies because of where their funding comes
from. But in the sense they are still agencies to help
work in and for our rural areas and other PPcommunities of interest. Ray:ppWhen we
talk about leadership in our rural areas. PPIt seems to me that one of theppthings
that sort of gets tainted is we see the radio
listen to the radio, see television shows and we read in the paper
about all the negative things around the mayor of a city or the city
council. And I think that what we probablyPPforget is all of the placesppwhere
they are successful and they don't have these kind of issues. Is that true?
That's very true. We've got I think it's nearly
37,000 registered non-profits in the state. Ray: Wow in Minnesota.
Ben: In Minnesota alone. And there is also more thousands of government agencies
like special sewer districts. Ray: They don't all PPhave my phone number? Ben: Theyppdon't
It's really an astounding number of groups
that we have that people create. And these are socially created
animals. People band together to create dairy co-operatives.
Band together to create these electric co-ops.PPA lot of times they are thereppto meet problems
or specific needs that we've got in our PPcommunities. But there has beenppa shift
in how people have been involved. So traditional groups, I would say the Kiwanis
the Lions Clubs, some of these groups are PPvery placed based. And theypphave a very wide
focus. So these have been transplanted by very
narrowly focused wide geographical organizations. Let me give you an example.
So 100 years the Hancock Community Betterment Club would do everything
from helping again with the school district toPPhelping build the seniorppcenter. You name it.
Everything within Hancock that club would be there to help support. Well today
we have groups like the west central Minnesota snow mobile association.
It's a very narrow interest but a wide geography. So it's really this shift
of how people want to be involved with their time that's dominated
some of the headlines that we see. So wePPdo talk about the fraternalpporganizations
and their membership groups losing their membership base. But at the same time
we tend not to see a lot of these intraspace groups that have risen
from all of these newcomers moving in that have really taken the place
of social interests in our rural communities. PPSo this is almost appdiversification
of our social interests in our rural communities. ppSo we used to be monoculture
in our rural communities but now we are multicultural. We've got community groups that
represent wide swaths of social interests across our communities.
Ray: That's really interesting because I think of like a senior citizen group in
I live in Staples and we have a pretty active senior group but I don't think it's real
large. And then I think of all the people in the community that are of that age.
that don't get involved with that. But maybeppthey are doing something else.
They are when we talk about I don't know if you are familiar with Robert Putnam did a
book called Bowling Alone. He lamented the fact that he believed television
was one of the primary factors of why people are not being involved anymore.
He used people who bowled alone as opposed to people who
bowled in groups as a measure of this lack of
social solidarity. My point is that peopleppjust aren't bowling anymore.
They may be riding bikes, they may be riding snowmobiles they are doing something different.
So just because where you look may have PPdeclining numbers and we'veppseen this with
churches. We saw this especially in the '30's,PP'40's and '50's as our ruralppcommunities
became more secularized we saw the rise of more and more churches.
When you don't have a monoculture religious base then you've got more
churches sprouting up and some that were big at the time losing their base.
So it kind of intermix of change that happens in our rural communities.
Where things that happen in one time period are
replaced by another. So again this is what I like to look at.
is the data to tell me what is going on in ourPPrural communities. Ray: Areppyou seeing
a parallel between Minnesota and Nebraska?
Ben: Very similar. Nebraska even in it's most rural counties
that experience great population loses. They arePPseeing a rise in the number ofppnon-profits.
And that means people are moving in, there are these 30-49 year olds moving
in to our little communities and they are PPstarting groups. The BlandinppRural Pulse
the Blandin Foundation does a survey every year that measures
attitudes and opinions in rural Minnesota. And they found that
53% of rural Minnesota were engaged in a leadership
position in their rural community. That for me is a pretty high figure.
When half of the people in community are involved in a community group. That's fairly high
so I started using some of the nuisancesppthat they found in their data
to look at this non-profit data. What I found was
most urban counties about 1 in 111 people need to be involved in the leadership.
position. When I say leadership I mean positional you're the president
vice president, secretary, treasurer. PPYou know kind of the core groupppthat runs
that group. But in our rural communities
but it is down to 1 in 11 in our most rural counties.
So really one person on every city block in our small towns needs to be involved
not just as a volunteer in community groups but as a leader.
That's really fascinating. Getting back to your
group concept for a minute. You know Minnesota passed this Legacy legislation
a number of years ago. I think that has astounded
the whole country that this state has invested
public television gets some of that money, our lakes, our rivers,
would that be fitting into your model a little bit. Ben: You bet
This is part of the rise of the non-profits.ppSo again we had a decline
in the mutual benefit organization but the environmental non-profit groups
we saw an increase of I believe 42% in thePPnumber of environmental groupsppbetween
2000-2010. So that means there are more PPpeople getting involved in thepplocal level.
And these are regional, again these aren'tppplace based when we talk about
environment. Because environment transcends are political boundaries.
So your watersheds go well beyond your county line. So these kind
political jurisdiction don't always match upPPwith our environmentalppjurisdiction
that space has been filled by the risePPof these non-profits. Whetherpppeople
are looking and concerned with water quality or the forests or the lakes.
This has been a big issues for Minnesotans and rightly so based on our
background. Ray: When you work with small communities
you do mostly rural work with what your PPresearch has been. How do youpphelp them
understand what this means for gettingPPnew leaders to theirppcommunities?
Ben: This is an important challenge for our small towns.
I'll tell a little story here. When I first moved back
to the Morris area to Hancock. I had been part of the Red Cross
when I was in Morris during my first stint. Then I moved to Missouri
for graduate school for 5 years and then I moved back. Within 3 days
of moving back to Hancock or buying a PPhouse there. There was appmessage on my
voicemail. Hi Ben this is Bob from the Red Cross just wanted to let you know
you were elected vice chair of the Red Cross last night. I thought well
I mean I love the Red Cross don't get me wrong. But there is
a type of social obligation that you see in a rural community that doesn't always
attract people to it. Another example may be
people that invite you to be in the Lions Club. ppWell what does that mean?
I don't want to commit myself to an open ended obligation here.
So I think there are some nuances in how the newcomers and the younger people
the millennials especially as they move into our
small towns in how they want to be involved. It doesn't entail
joining the group for the sake of the groupsPPname. It entails some level ofpppersonal
commitment and personal involvement theyPPwant to have in their group.ppSo it's start
out slow. It doesn't mean always just tellPPthe people to come to myppmeeting.
Like we've got a meeting on Thursday you should be there. That is really almost
the wrong approach to these newcomers.ppIt is finding out what their
interests are. But even before that is findingppout where these newcomers are.
Cause honestly, what I've found is people don't always see the newcomers in our
small towns. When we've got a turnover of 30 to 55% of all people in
a community over a five year period which is fairly high.
How do you find these people out? When we all run
in our same circles, so when I relate it to
people who work different shifts. If you work 1st shift and you work 2nd shift you don't eat at
the same time you don't shop at the same time PPyou don't always do things atppthe same time.
You tend not to see one another. This is the same idea is true for
people in their social life. The groups that you arePPinvolved with are notppnecessarily the groups
that I'm involved with. So it takes a concerted effort to be able to do the bridging here
between those two social worlds. At we at PPextension have programs thatppwork on this
We have a social capital program whereppwe do bridging and bonding
in between these types of community groups that exist in our communities.
This is the type of work that needs to be done. PPFinding the newcomerspprecruiting them based on
the differential interests that they've PPgot rather than our play spaceppgroups.
And finding better ways to integrate them into our existing leadership structures.
Ray: It used to be that there was a welcome PPwagon in a lot of ourppcommunities.
I don't know if a welcome wagon exists in any more communities or not? Ben: Not
as such. Ray: But what are communities in PPyour experience what areppcommunities doing
to identify these people now? Ben: It's pretty difficult. We're in an age of
privacy right now. So the welcome wagons in the past used to get a mailing list from the post office
or the city clerk that said here is a list of all the people that moved in the past month.
Why don't you do your work. And you can't do that today. There are
privacy concerns that people have and even if you could obtain a list they might be
a little scary for people to get that knock on the door.
Without being invited to something else.
What we have found that works is beating the doors. Finding the
newcomers that have moved to a rural community. We did a project in west central
Minnesota. We were going to go out an interview and invite
people to gatherings in five western Minnesota towns.
And we started to sit down and come up with a list of the actual names
of the newcomers. And we thought if wePPcan get 50 people we'll beppdoing alright.
And within a month we had 600 people on the list. Ray: Wow.
Ben: That we new to the region in the past 5 years. This tends to snowball
So what we did and one thing that has really worked well in some of our rural communities
is having a newcomer evening.
That means it is not driven by the existing ppcommunity groups. It's a chamber
that donates a couple hundred dollars to help PPget a supper together. And getppthe
newcomers together and have them get to know each other. There is the idea
of cohorts here. That is that millennials hang outPPtogether. Gen-X people hangppout together.
Baby boomers hang out together. Why we do try to transgress those line
There is some social capital that does need to be built within those cohorts.
So this type of an idea that... Let's find the newcomers
Let's invite them and get them to know onePPanother. And see whatppopportunities there
are for them to be involved in their own community. Ray: I have a selfish question
I belong to a number of groups.
A couple clubs and all of these clubs we seem to be having
a pretty good turnover. And maybe we're not doing what you are suggesting
Here don't just get them to come to your meetings but see
what really interests them. Is that something that would be key
to a Rotary Club, or a Lion's Club. Ben: You hit the nail on the head. You have to
business differently in our existing groups.ppWe can't continue to say
here is the four events we are going to PPhave every year. And when weppwant to
get somebody involved in our community groupPPthat they've got to tag on toppthese events
here. It may be a negotiation where wePPare going to reduce two ofppthose events.
And come up with two new ones based on what the newcomers want to do. It is
a touchy situation. And kind of reaching back
to De Tocqueville, when was the last time we voluntarily dissolved a community
group. I can't tell you, you know
The American Legions are some groups that see are starting to fade away.
Yep their struggling. Ray: Would that bePPan example. Ben: That is anppexample
so I've worked with many many groups that havePPhad 2 -3 to 5 people showingppup at meetings
every month. And it is a struggle to keep this group going. And my point is
what are we going do? Are you going to continue
to hold meetings with 3-5 people for the next PPnumber of years until youppdissolve out?
When honestly I would like to see these people
involved with this group transition themselves to a new group because these people have the
history. They've got the knowledge, the experience of how to run community.
How to run community events. How to run community activities. How to involve people.
How to do fundraising. There are a lot of aspects to maintaining
community group. And these people have aPPwealth of experience. Butppthere tends to be this
divide between the existing traditional PPbased groups and the newppintraspace groups.
Ray: For the people that didn't see you program on
the Brain Game. Could you just talk a little bit about that too as it ties in
to this. Ben: You bet. The key messagepphere is that rural areas
have actually been increasing in population since 1970.
In Minnesota even the rural population went up by 11%. Ray: I don't think
many people realize it. Even though we've talked about it.
Ben: Raise your hand if you've heard this before and very few people have.
When the headline tends to be more about the percentage of people living in rural areas
Ray: Or the retail stores that have left town. Ben: Yes, or the retail stores and all these
kind of structural changes that we've witnessed.PPBut the fact is more peopleppare living in rural
areas than they did in 1970. And these people are continuing to move in decade after
decade. 70's, the 80's was a little bit ppof a dip and the 90's was
a sky rocket for our rural growth. What wePPfound was this was primarilyppin the
30-50 year old age group. And there were 3 primary reasons people gave why they want
to make the move. Slower pace of life was number one. Safety and security was
number 2. The low price of housing was number 3. And nowhere
surprisingly in the top ten was a job.PPSo people were really movingppout to rural
areas for quality of life. These aren't like the back to the land movements of
the '70's. These are people with Master's,PPDoctorate degrees. that areppable
to telecommute. That are able to do their architectural
job in rural area. There are lot more opportunities for people to
survive in a rural area than ever before. Ray: Wow
That really is fascinating. I read an article
yesterday in one of the state newspapersPPsaying that there is appmigration
now from suburbs back to the metro areas
So in some of the bigger city areas that trend is reversing kind of the other
way. For some of the same reasons that youPPtalked about not because ofppthe other way.
Don't have to drive as far. Closer to
the theater or the grocery store than it is in the suburbs. And it's a different
set of interest coming from these young people
than their parents. Ben: You bet. And really what we've seen in the kind of urban rural dynamic
here is that our young kids leave our rural communities. Our 18-20
year olds leave and they go to the metro. The metropolitan counties the core
metro Hennepin and Ramsey do a very good job of attracting 18-25 year olds.
But generally and more specifically they are not able to hold on to people
over the age of 30-35. So almost all of the age cohorts above the
age of 30 metro area can not hold on to these folks. And this is
actually kind of a surprise. What we find in the cohort lifecycle
model. People graduate, they go to a college county
or core metro. Then after college everybody goes to the core metro.
But than after the age of 30 they are PPreconsidering their move soppthey are moving
out to the suburbs and rural areas like. So it is kind of in and out flow of people
within all of our different communities across the state. Ray: Wow
When you work in the extension area and you're working with rural communities.
What are some of things that.. What kind of PPservices do you provide toppcommunities
when they want to talk to you? Ben: We offer aPPnumber of different services.ppOur two primary
arms are engaging people in leadership and civic engagement.
This can take place in terms of leadership, ppindividual leadership programs.
Where we would invite a cohort to get together and go through and gain skills
about how to run effective meetings. How to deal with conflict. How to
analyze your own leadership skills.
Where on the other side it may be civic engagement.
So with environmental agencies to help people understand
what PCA specifically. To help people understand some of the statistics that come out
about your environment. So it's both leadership and civic engagement.
on one side of what we do. But on the other is economic development.
Here we want to retain or expand businesses. We want to train
people in using technology in order to expand their businesses. And we want
to have people understand their own retail markets. So we have a number of different
programs in both those areas that help our rural communities survive and thrive
in this century of change. Ray: The thing that I've found fascinating
about you is you always have such clarity to your research.
And your outcomes are so easy to understand
I think you would a benefit, your organization to any rural
community that is wondering what they can do to make themselves
more vitality in the community. You have a website and what is that?
Ben: www.extension.umn.edu
If you click on community we are in
the community arm of extension. And how PPmany are doing what you do inppthe
extension?
Ben: Roughly 3-4 kind of content area specialists
But we've really got a number of educators. We
have people helping with our communityPPmeetings, doing our leadershipppprograms
doing our technology training, and we'rePPoffering more and moreppwebinars too.
So I think we are helping to keep pace with the change we've seen across Minnesota.
Ray: Getting back to the leadership thing for a minute
What are some of the things that you see happening from your research
in your organization? What are you going to try toPPdo now with this new data?ppBen: Sure, a lot of
this for example. Part of this data whenPPwe look at non-profits whichppcounties
have experience a rise in the number of non-profits. These counties
with the greatest rise in the number of non-profits are ripe for leadership programs.
So I'd like to say that all these new community groups
have a really great leadership structure. But in a sense
it is just a group of people getting together to say I want to create a snowmobile club.
It doesn't mean that people are well versed PPin how to run their 501-C3. Andpphow to manage
your finances and how to make good decisionsPPand how to arrive atppconsensus.
So this is part of the work that I really enjoy seeing done.
is helping to build the technical and leadership capacity of
our rural communities. There aren't many studies
out there that give you examples of the impact
the bad decisions. You might see some things about
a group might of engaged in a lawsuit because of a bad decision they made.
But especially on the good side, like there isn't a lot of research
on the other side of what is the valuePPof a good decision makingppstructure.
So this is part of what we want to look PPand we've got a number ofppresearchers
and our educators during research as well. And helping to answer some of these questions.
We have to understand the research base before we can offer programming.
Ray: Do you see real strong leadership in regions
or is there really no difference? Ben: We haven't seen big differences
even in like the Rural Pulse Poll that Blandin does. There
weren't large differences. There were some geographic variation in terms of
where people got involved and where they didn't. But we're talking small percentage points
For me it wasn't a statistically significant difference. But again
when were talking about a general number like 53% of rural
Minnesotans are engaged in a leadership position. That's
whether 48 or 56 for me that's about half of the people,
which is for me a pretty astounding number. PPRay: That is really anppastounding number.
Are you finding more and more young peoplePPstepping into these leadershippproles
as these non-profits groups are developing? Ben: Yeah and they do it differently too.
The way the IRS wants are non-profit world structured is that everybody got a body
board. And that board makes the decisionPPand that board authenticatesppactions for
the organization in their federal reporting. But the newcomers
they aren't always engaged in such formal activities.
A measure of how many presidents, vice-president, secretary and treasurer.
You may be missing some of that but at the same time you do need to have the leadership structure.
So it's kind of this balance between the formal and the informal that we need to reach.
Ray: Wow that's really really fascinating information. Let's just
run by your website one more time. If people want to contact you how should
they do it. Ben: Yep extension.umn.edu and if you want to e-mail me my email is
benw@umn.edu
If you were to work with someone how farPPout in advance would they haveppto plan?
To get your expertize. Ben: Not too far out a month or so.
We've got lots of educators across the state that know this content too. Ray: Okay
What is your next project? Ben: Next projectppimpact of the baby boomers
transition on our rural communities. I believe that this is going to open up a lot of
housing opportunities for the newcomers in our rural communities. Ray: Very interesting
Well my guest has been Ben Winchester research fellow
with the University of MInnesota extension. PPFascinating stuff. Thank youppfor coming
on the show. It is just never dull to have you here.PPBen: Thank you. Ray: You'veppbeen watching
Lakeland Currents. Where we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildow.
So long until next time.
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