I am fascinated by crowdfunding campaigns, especially those centered around local needs. When done well, they represent a direct route to creating real, tangible good that was previously impossible. It's probably not smart to wholly depend on them for full funding, but the power of a platform like IndieGoGo or Kickstarter to drastically affect the flow of capital is undeniable. 

I grow even more hopeful when I consider the potential impact of precise crowdfunding on a town like Kinston, North Carolina. Kinston is 25 minutes from where I live and the hometown of a close friend and his family. It is home to a little under 22,000 people. Its median income is $26,000; and 32% of its children live below the poverty line. There's some good work happening there already in the community and business development spaces, but it could definitely use a shot in the arm.

The question is the form that shot in the arm should take. Considering this question without falling into the traditional trap that it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a huge dent is tough, but absolutely necessary.

This brings me to 123 S. Queen St.

An old retail space with nearly 2300 sq. ft., 123 S. Queen St. is listed as having a tax value of $9,600. Though there is always a difference between tax value (assessed by local government) and appraised value (arrived at by local real estate appraisers), it's unlikely that this building would sell for more than $25,000 (or that its owner would object to that payment). Let's tack on $25,000 for materials and specialized upgrades/renovations (and hundreds of volunteer hours) to make it a clean $50,000 (a very generous estimate).

Now, let's pivot and imagine what could be. With $50,000, this could become...

• a co-working space where local non-profits and small business could collaborate on local and regional initiatives,
  
• a children's theater and arts space,
• a start-up incubator for companies looking to better serve a rural market, or
• countless other spaces that could multiply Kinston's present value (economic and beyond)

Whatever a particular community judges as best for itself isn't as important so much as establishing that a project styled in this manner is not only entirely reasonable, it is incredibly necessary. Catalyzing growth through crowdfunding would have a marginally greater impact in Kinston than almost anywhere else in the country. The next step down the road - establishing a roadmap or model for other small towns to pursue a similar path themselves - wouldn't be that tough, either. It's not crazy to imagine that projects and growth like this could become the norm, spiderwebbing into hundreds of directions. Together, we know thousands of people who know thousands of people who care about places like Kinston. If they have the internet and $20, they can help.

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this isn't a choice. It is. If we don't reconsider the value of the rural South, we will suffocate its history, ignore its value, and willfully cement the increasing urban/rural class divides. That's not a future I care to be a part of, and I have to wonder if places like 123 S. Queen St. are the key to drastically altering the landscape of the rural Southeast.

A group down payment of $50,000 could help destroy a mindset about where growth can and should happen, and who should have a seat at the table. 

[Find Greenfield Southeast on Facebook!]

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I've made some small adjustments to how I'm spreading the word and wanted to quickly share my thinking and guidance for how YOU can contribute!

Greenfield Southeast content, at least as I understand it at this point, is beginning to fall into two buckets. For now, I'll call them "interesting reads" and "commentary". That may change down the line, but I'll cross that bridge later.  The Facebook page will continue to be where you can find 100% of what's posted, because I'm not crazy enough to think that people check the blog daily (...yet. And if you do, thank you!). I'll post blog entries (commentary) over there once they're done so that interested readers can easily find them. (I'm also working on my personal sharing settings to avoid double posts for some of you.)

There are also two growing groups of potential contributors that I'd like to acknowledge and give some guidance to.

Group 1: I have a relevant/interesting article to share!
Great! Just post it to the Facebook page; and if it looks like something that makes sense to post widely, I'll do it as quickly as my normal life schedule allows.

Group 2: The blog is really missing an entry about ________________.
Let me know! I'm open to the idea of guest posts or suggestions. I'm one guy with a full-time job and one perspective; and the more dimensions we can add to the blog, the better.

Ultimately, though, Greenfield Southeast as a blog/FB page cannot be an end in and of itself. My hope is that its real worth will be through readers arriving at a better understanding of the human development crisis currently plaguing the southeast (mostly) out of the public eye AND being inspired to take action to help increase quality of life for everyone living in Southern small towns.

There are four hundred years of history at work here. It's taken the work of many already and will take the effort of many more to build a better life for the 20 million people living in our region's small towns. I hope that y'all are finding this writing sustaining and thought-provoking and a helpful piece of a much broader effort.

Thanks as always for reading,

Travis

Most people driving through Plymouth, North Carolina on US Hwy 64 on their way back from the Outer Banks wouldn't think twice. They'd pass Pines Elementary, the Golden Skillet, the Super 8, the Bojangles and be on their way. Maybe they'd mention how it's funny that North Carolina has a Plymouth, too. If they had to make a pit stop, they would have already done so up the road in Columbia, a "nice" town - albeit smaller. 

They may catch a glimpse of the agricultural research center on the way into town; but they would almost certainly miss the downtown riverfront boardwalk and the historical marker denoting the capture of Plymouth in 1864.  And all the while - Plymouth, with its $24,000 median income and near-complete dependency on a paper mill for employment - would continue to slip further and further into an economic abyss.

Much of this behavior can be attributed to how the typical person interprets time (especially on a road trip) - most of us think there's never enough time to do what needs to be done, so who has time to stop and read some marker anyway? Much less spend significant time and money in a place like this.

Another more extreme and less innocuous mindset is manifest when a visitor refers to small towns as "backwaters" whose inhabitants simply aren't smart enough to jump a sinking ship. No matter that they may have a strong personal connection or, conversely, may lack the resources to leave.

This behavior and its many shades speaks to how we perceive value. What would a small town like Plymouth have to offer a visitor anyway? Probably very little, the thinking goes. Pity seems the most logical reaction for those who have to live there.

It makes no sense why we would continue to willfully and carelessly badmouth towns like Plymouth. And I believe we do so at our own risk, as Plymouth is one of hundreds of towns in shockingly similar economic and social circumstances throughout the South.

It's reasonable to assume that every community has unique assets and potential to create. Communities are collections of people, anchored around a place or other connective element. So my first assumption flows logically from another - all individuals have unique assets to share and deep potential to create. A community's power, therefore,  lies in its ability to generate opportunities as an outgrowth of the connections its residents share. As a country,though, we tend to ignore the potential of towns like Plymouth to generate growth, assuming that growth is somehow impossible anywhere outside of a major city.

For Plymouth - a semi-remote, rural, Southern town in need of a good jolt to stay alive, not to mention thrive - to become this kind of community there must be, above all, wider acknowledgement that its community has its own unique assets and potential to create.  Everything else - long-range planning, policy initiatives, small business efforts, and other needed measures - will only reach their greatest potential if they are conducted within that frame. From a state and regional perspective, it will only be when this frame and measures aligned to it become commonplace that towns like Plymouth will begin to show measurable gains towards increased quality of life.

There are nearly 24 million people living in towns smaller than 20,000 in the South. Casually ignoring the potential of those towns, not to mention the growing disparities between urban and rural quality of life, is a perilous habit that we must break.