Ask folks at pretty much any civic organization in Jefferson County — or across rural Montana, for that matter — what their biggest challenge is, and they’ll inevitably tell you: Finding people. How do we recruit enough firefighters, school activity helpers, community garden weeders, committee members?
And to the point: How do we broaden our base of volunteers from the handful of usual suspects who have done everything for forever?
I’m continuing to ponder the intersection of belonging and civic life, and the question of how we might engage more people to help build our community’s future. (You can read my earlier notes on this in The Monitor’ June 19 and July 3 issues.) Just 26% of Americans say they feel like they belong in their local communities, according to a report by Over Zero and the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council. What can we do to move that number higher?
When Boulder first joined Montana State University’s “Reimagining Rural” initiative in 2022, we took in a presentation by Tara Mastel, MSU’s Extension Community Vitality Program leader, on the phenomenon of newcomers — people who are new to a community.
Mastel reported that rural places across the state were seeing surges of people moving in from other places, most of them with no previous affiliation to their respective communities. Intriguingly, according to her surveys, many of those newcomers seemed eager to engage in their new places: Nearly half said they sometimes or often worked on a community or regional project in a typical year; about a third said they attended a public meeting to discuss town or school affairs.
I spoke with Mastel recently about this research. (She lived in Boulder before moving to Red Lodge, and for a while she led the Jefferson Local Development Corporation — so she knows and loves our county.) She observed that there are two big challenges in engaging newcomers — or, for that matter, engaging anyone who hasn’t previously been active.
The first is pretty straightforward: “They’re hard to find!” she says. If someone is new and hasn’t engaged with a community before, there’s no easy trail to their door. The Boulder Area Chamber of Commerce has reached some folks with an information packet given to new residents who register at City Hall for a water connection — an ingenious and low-lift start, though the actual impact isn’t certain. But Mastel says communities should test a variety of ways to meet newcomers where they are.
Some small towns have invested in public spaces geared to foster easy social connections: Havre created an “Art Alley” to host local artists; and Hysham, the tiny seat of Treasure County, has explored ways to turn a fire hall into a community center — much as Stu and Lisa Goodner are looking to convert what’s currently a welding shop on their Main Street property in Boulder into a dance hall.
Others have engineered occasional events targeting newcomers: Forsyth, which is about Boulder’s size, organized a gathering with a food truck, the high school band, and a welcome from the mayor. “It was phenomenal,” Mastel recalls. New residents were delighted at the opportunity to be recognized and make connections; one ended up running for City Council. More surprising, “old timers saw these newcomers and saw they loved this town so much.” Folks who had been caught up in the narrative of Forsyth’s downward spiral, Mastel says, were reminded what was positive about their place.
At scale, that could look something like what’s going on in western Minnesota, where the non-profit West Central Initiative supports activities designed to foster and sustain belonging in nine rural counties and the White Earth Nation.
Celeste Kopp, the organization’s rural initiatives strategist, says those communities have experienced both a rapidly aging population and an influx of newcomers from other countries. Many residents are comfortable discussing the first phenomenon, but nervous about the second.
The West Central Initiative has responded by seeding community-based “Welcoming Weeks” — part of a national campaign each September catalyzed by the national organization Welcoming America — and by training and providing modest funding to a network of local hosts. “What we saw the first year,” Kopp says, “was that there was maybe one person in a community who was interested, and they didn’t have anybody else to validate that.” Being connected to peer hosts in other, nearby communities, she says, provided a sense of support. In 2022, West Central Initiative counted 10 welcoming events; the next year, there were 30.
So, those are responses to the problem of finding newcomers. The second challenge is more nuanced and, perhaps, harder: Once you identify and engage new folks, how do you keep them?
There was a big gap in Mastel’s survey responses between the number of newcomers who said they “sometimes” engaged in civic activities and those who reported doing so “often.” And that is, in fact, the rub: Bridging that gap, she says, requires open-mindedness and flexibility.
“Existing folks need to be welcoming and open to new ideas. When you have new people coming, they want to get involved — but they’ll have different ideas, and they’ll want to share and add something new. If you shut them down, they’re going to go elsewhere.”
In practice, that means being consistently curious. Rather than shutting new ideas down — “that’s not how we do it here,” can be a downer for someone trying to break into an organization — we could ask, “Why do you think that would work? How did it work where you lived before?”
That doesn’t mean accepting every new idea from every newcomer; there often are good reasons why things have been done the way they’ve been done. But “with a kind and open response, [new people] will learn how you do things,” Mastel says — and the discussion will be richer for their energy and creativity.
Ultimately, I think, kindling a stronger sense of belonging requires that we shift mental gears. It’s one thing to simply accept people who arrive from other places — and another to actively and warmly invite them in.
Mechele Anderson, who moved back to Boulder, where she grew up, two years ago after decades away, understands this instinctively. “I walk [my dog] Jack, and I stop people,” she says. “‘Oh, you’re new to the neighborhood?’ It’s a personal touch. You have to let people know that you’re their neighbor, and engage them.”
And then, Anderson asks them to get involved. She steers the Reimagining Boulder group that emerged from the “Reimagining Rural” conversations two years ago — and she says that five or six of the eight residents who regularly attend meetings are relatively new to the city. One, she says, is preparing to host a block party for her neighborhood.
And this is the thing: Many people are just waiting to be asked — to be welcomed into a place where they can be themselves, contribute their ideas and help make change. It’s up to us to invite them.
