HomeTown Competitiveness

For the Nebraska Community Foundation, HomeTown Competitiveness is not about towns competing against one another. It’s about hometowns competing in a global economy. 

The HomeTown Competitiveness (HTC) is a holistic, community-driven economic development strategy based on homegrown assets.  HTC builds on the kinds of local resources that nearly every rural community – no matter how small – already has. NCF works with local task forces organized around the assets of four HTC Pillars:

• Leadership to mobilize communities with a long-term vision for prosperity
• Entrepreneurship to support innovation and economic growth
• Youth Engagement to cultivate a sense of belonging and opportunity
• Philanthropy to provide financial resources for community and economic development

NCF co-founded HTC to help create new economic opportunity in rural Nebraska. HTC uses a “come-back/give-back” approach to rekindle residents’ belief and hope in the future of their hometown, thereby transforming community conversations and psychology.

In 2002, leaders in Ord, Nebraska, which is located in Valley County, more than 50 miles north of Interstate 80, came to the Nebraska Community Foundation for help. With more than 20 “priorities” for economic development they were struggling to make real progress. The Nebraska Community Foundation offered them an opportunity to become the pilot site for a new approach to rural development led by NCF:  HomeTown Competitiveness, or HTC.

NCF and its partners, the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and the Heartland Center for Leadership Development began an intensive on-site intervention with community leaders in Valley County.

Within five years the economy in Valley County had changed:  104 new, expanded and/or transferred businesses; 332 new full time jobs; $89 million invested locally. New jobs created new opportunities for former residents to move back and new residents to move in.  Ord, Nebraska, was growing again for the first time since the 1930s.

The success of HomeTown Competitiveness in Valley County stirred interest throughout the state, across the nation, and won the 2004 Innovative Program Award of the international Community Development Society. Our “come-back—give back” approach was reported in countless articles, including in the New York Times. The W. K. Kellogg Foundation is a strong supporter of the HTC Collaborative and highlighted the program in its 2005 Annual Report Video.

But most importantly, people in small towns were watching and thinking, “If they can do it in Ord, we can do it here.”

HTC is now being implemented in sites across Nebraska and in several other states.  No two HTC sites are exactly alike, however, in each location local leaders work through the HTC framework and build upon hometown assets and resources that are already available in the community.

Learn more about HTC in Holt County, Nebraska.

Learn more about HTC in McCook, Nebraska.

The HTC Web site provides additional collaborative information and success stories to help small towns thrive.