Why do young people leave rural communities? And what would make them stay or come back?

Renee challenges the way we talk about rural brain drain and why treating it as a problem with young people can lead communities toward the wrong solutions.

The real conversation is about opportunity, affordable housing, reliable broadband, career growth and creating a community where people feel welcome and valued.

Because leaving home isn't always a rejection of home. Sometimes it's simply a practical decision.

Don't ask young people to choose loyalty over opportunity. Build a place where they can have both.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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When a rural community loses businesses or jobs, the instinct is often to start recruiting replacements.

But business attraction may not be the first move.

Sarah explains why successful rural economic development often starts long before the ribbon cutting by strengthening existing businesses, building the workforce pipeline and addressing infrastructure gaps like housing, broadband and childcare.

Attraction isn't the wrong strategy. It's the wrong first step when the foundation isn't ready to support it.

Build the foundation first. Give businesses a reason to stay.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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The most valuable asset in your community may never show up in a dataset.

Renee explains why the relationships built over decades between trusted neighbors, pastors, coaches, business owners, educators and other community members can determine whether a new initiative gains momentum or struggles to get people in the room.

Because people often respond to a trusted messenger before they respond to an institution.

Before you launch the next survey, town hall or community initiative, ask a different question: Who does this community actually listen to?

Not who has the title. Who has the trust?

Connect the trust before you do anything else.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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Should a nonprofit spend every dollar it raises by the end of the year?

Sarah challenges one of the most persistent ideas about nonprofit finances and explains what financial health actually looks like: operating reserves, diversified revenue, adequately funded overhead, financial transparency and enough flexibility to handle ordinary problems before they become emergencies.

Because an organization can look well funded on paper and still have no room to breathe.

Living grant cycle to grant cycle isn't humility. It's fragility.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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A profitable business can still run out of cash.

Why? Because revenue on paper and money in the bank are two very different things.

Renee breaks down why cash flow is as much about timing as it is about revenue, and three questions every business owner should be asking about payment timelines, cash reserves and overdue invoices.

Because sometimes the solution isn't making more money. It's managing the calendar of your money differently.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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Your budget looks official. But how much of it is based on assumptions that haven't played out quite the way you expected?

Sarah explains why a budget should be treated less like a fixed plan and more like a hypothesis, and why regularly comparing your actual numbers to what you expected can help you make better decisions before a small variance becomes a bigger problem.

The goal isn't to make your budget perfectly predict the future. It's to understand what's changing and what that means for your next 90 days.

Your budget is a starting point, not a finish line.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  After all of these quick episodes talking about grants, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, community development, leadership and everything in between, Renee closes out Season 1 of Thrive in Five by going back to where it started.

Renee and Sarah kept seeing capable communities, purpose-driven organizations and promising entrepreneurs get stuck. Not because they weren't working hard enough or didn't have good ideas, but because they were missing the right support at the right moment.

Sometimes that's capacity. Sometimes it's grant writing or strategic planning. And sometimes it's simply having an experienced outside perspective in the room to help you figure out what comes next.

That's why they created Thrive.

In this season finale, Renee shares why they see themselves as partners, not simply consultants, what their own experience doing this work has taught them, and why they want to be there for the difficult planning conversations, the grant rejections, the pivots and, especially, the wins.

If something from Season 1 made you think differently, gave you an idea or helped you take a next step, this episode is also an invitation:

Let's keep the conversation going.

Thank you for spending five minutes at a time with us this season!

Five Minutes - One Practical Idea - Stronger Communities.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Entrepreneurs and community leaders are constantly told to scale faster, do more and chase the next opportunity. But growth that outpaces your people, systems or capacity can create more problems than progress.

In this episode of Thrive in Five, Sarah makes the case for a different kind of growth: intentional, sustainable and built to last.

That means building one thing well before adding the next. Saying no to opportunities that don't align, even when the money looks good. Investing in people and systems before you desperately need them. And knowing your numbers, your limits and your strategy well enough to make decisions from stability instead of urgency.

Because the goal isn't to grow as fast as possible.

It's to build something strong enough to sustain the growth when it comes.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  You spent hours researching, writing, gathering data and building the strongest proposal you could. Then the answer comes back: no.

In this episode of Thrive in Five, Renee explains why even strong grant proposals get rejected, including factors you may never see, from changing funder priorities and budget cycles to the number of applications and the people reviewing them.

More importantly, she shares what to do next: ask for feedback, take it seriously, make adjustments when needed and keep the conversation going.

Because rejection is information, but it’s rarely the whole story. And in grant strategy, “no today” doesn’t have to mean “no forever.”

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Sarah speaks to executive directors, small business owners, and community leaders who are trying to do too much alone, describing a common pattern where capacity, strategy, funding, or team issues are ignored or handled internally until they escalate into a crisis. She shares examples of a long-time entrepreneur who waited too long to address financial problems and a nonprofit where unaddressed team dynamics became conflict and turnover. Sarah emphasizes that asking for help and asking questions are not signs of weakness or incompetence, but strategic actions that prevent bigger problems later. Sustainable leaders know their limits, bring in expertise early, and invest in support before they become desperate. If you feel stretched or stuck, she urges you to ask for help now while you still have options.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Renee contrasts business leadership with community leadership, emphasizing that community leaders often have real responsibility but limited authority and can’t mandate participation or force collaboration. Instead, they build trust by showing up consistently, sharing credit, staying at the table when things get hard, returning calls, remembering what matters to people, and being honest about challenges. The episode highlights that community leadership is relational before it’s strategic, and that people primarily want to be heard and understood rather than agreed with. Small actions like listening and following up can shift suspicion into trust over time. Renee concludes that trust is the infrastructure everything else is built on, even if it takes a long time to build, and encourages listeners to lead with trust.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Sarah explains that most partnership agreements focus on shared goals but skip planning for disagreement, changing priorities, shifts in capacity, illness, or even death—realities that can devastate business, nonprofit, and community partnerships when there’s no plan. Drawing on what she’s seen in the field and through CoStarters, she shares an attorney’s common warning: partners often fail to put a solid partnership agreement in place because they avoid difficult conversations. She emphasizes that conflict and life changes are inevitable, and lasting partnerships are built when partners talk about conflict early, name power dynamics honestly, and clarify decision-making structures before a crisis. Strong partnerships are built on honest foundations.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Renee argues that planning is often the easy part, while real failure happens months later when owners of action items leave, budgets don’t appear, and teams wait for someone else to act. She says most community plans die through a quiet stall and that successful organizations treat implementation planning as seriously as strategy by defining ownership for each priority, creating a concrete first 90-day action plan, and committing real resources before finalizing the plan. She emphasizes revisiting the 90-day plan every three months to catch problems early instead of reviewing annually, which leads to gaps and panic. If a strategic plan is sitting on a shelf, she advises not starting a new planning process but starting an implementation conversation because action, not plans, changes communities.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Sarah speaks to economic developers, community planners, and nonprofit directors about identifying the informal leaders every community has—people without titles who hold real trust and influence in neighborhoods, workplaces, and churches. She argues that professionals often view communities only through the problems they address and miss perspectives they don’t know they lack. Before planning begins, she recommends asking “Whose voice is missing?” and seeking out those voices by going to them, listening more than talking, and valuing their relationships. Drawing on advice from Renee to “choose your five,” Sarah suggests selecting a small group of trusted community members with wisdom and issue-specific knowledge, including across generations, even if they won’t attend meetings. She emphasizes that the right people can change everything.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Renee explains why most community meetings fail: they’re designed to inform rather than engage, with a presentation followed by Q&A that leaves people feeling like spectators. She argues real engagement starts with genuine questions like “What’s the most important thing we need to get right?”, creates space for people who don’t speak up publicly, and changes outcomes based on what’s heard. Renee recommends offering multiple ways to contribute—such as surveys or Post-It boards—because different audiences engage differently. By designing meetings for contribution instead of presentation, people feel their input matters, invest in the outcome, and take ownership, leading to a plan the community owns rather than merely tolerates.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Sarah from Thrive Community Partners shares why learning to say no is a crucial skill for entrepreneurs and small business owners. She explains that saying no to bad-fit clients, misaligned projects, and distracting opportunities protects your core offer and keeps your focus as you grow. While it can feel scary to turn things down, she argues that saying yes to everything isn’t momentum—it’s diffusion—and it makes it harder to excel at what drives success. Using the example of constant donation requests, she suggests choosing one to two organizations that align with your mission and consistently supporting them, while declining the rest. Sarah notes that businesses that scale successfully get ruthless about what they take on to make room for the right opportunities.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  This is how small businesses get trapped in a “race to the bottom” by undercutting competitors to win early customers, triggering price wars where everyone earns less and works harder. Renee argues the cheapest competitor isn’t the real problem; the bigger issue is not being clear about why your business is worth more. She explains that price communicates value and that customers who buy only on price are the least loyal, leaving as soon as someone offers less. Instead, she encourages focusing on the value drivers behind the business—service, results, experience, and trust—accepting that not everyone is your customer, and charging based on what makes your work valuable rather than how cheaply you can go.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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  Sarah challenges aspiring entrepreneurs to stop waiting for their business idea to be “almost” ready, arguing that “almost” is more dangerous than failure because it stalls dreams with endless moving targets like more savings, a finished website, or a completed business plan. Drawing on what Thrive Community Partners sees repeatedly, she explains that paralysis through analysis keeps people from launching, while entrepreneurs who build lasting businesses start with what they have, begin small, learn quickly, and adjust fast. She encourages viewers to identify the smallest, most real version of their business they can implement this week, emphasizing that 30 days of doing teaches more than six months of planning, and closing with the reminder that done beats perfect.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

Learn to Thrive! 

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Most grant proposals don't fail because of the narrative—they fail because the budget doesn't inspire confidence.

In this episode of Thrive in Five, Sarah explains why funders view your grant budget as a trust document and how it influences every funding decision. Learn why your budget should never be an afterthought, how it should reinforce your program narrative, and why honesty about indirect costs actually strengthens your proposal.

You'll also discover three practical ways to improve your next grant proposal:

•  Connect every budget line directly to your program description. 
•  Include indirect costs instead of hiding them. 
•  Build flexibility into your budget because real projects evolve. 

If you're writing grant proposals, managing nonprofit funding, or developing a long-term grant strategy, this episode will help you create budgets that build credibility and increase funder confidence.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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Drawing on 20 years of grant writing and reviewing hundreds of proposals, Renee explains that winning grant applications almost always share one key trait: specificity. She argues that funders don’t fund vague language or uncommitted ranges; they fund specific, credible, executable plans that state the exact number of people served, the exact location, the exact intervention, and the exact measurable outcomes. Renee notes writers often drift into comfort zones by adding extra time to timelines or using ranges for participants, which works against them. She advises revisiting drafts to circle vague words like “many,” “various,” “significant,” or “comprehensive” and replacing each with a number, a name, or a specific description to strengthen the application.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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Sarah challenges nonprofits to stop “grant chasing,” calling it exhausting, inconsistent, and harmful to building capacity, and instead adopt a funding strategy based on organizational priorities and three-year goals. She explains that a strategy works backward to identify aligned funding sources, the right sequence, and needed lead time, helping teams move from reactive deadline-hopping to planning. Framing grant writing as relationship-building, she compares applying for mismatched grants to a bad first date that won’t lead to a second, emphasizing that alignment with both funder priorities and your own strategy matters. With a strategy in place, organizations can stop pursuing poor-fit opportunities, build funder relationships before an RFP drops, and strengthen proposals without constantly reinventing their narrative.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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Renee shares why the “we’re too small” narrative is one of the most damaging beliefs rural communities can hold, arguing that small-town closeness is actually a powerful relationship infrastructure that larger cities try to recreate at great cost. She explains that rural communities can move quickly because key people already know and trust each other—mayors, superintendents, economic developers, and major employers can get in the same room within a week without layers of bureaucracy. While acknowledging the everyday reality that small towns make quick errands difficult because everyone knows everyone, she emphasizes that this connectivity becomes invaluable when projects or grant deadlines demand fast coordination. Renee challenges listeners to focus on leveraging this existing asset, reminding them that community size is not a limitation but an advantage.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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Sarah explains that grant proposals are rarely rejected because of poor writing, but instead for three common reasons: misalignment between the project and the funder’s priorities, weak community evidence that the problem is real and the organization is credible, and a lack of a clear implementation path showing how the work will happen after funding. She advises spending an hour before writing to confirm true alignment, demonstrate that the community is experiencing the stated problem, and outline a practical plan for execution and sustainability beyond the funding period. Addressing these issues makes the writing more effective, helps proposals come together faster, and increases the chances of winning grants.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

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In this episode of Thrive in Five, Renee explains a common mistake communities make: investing heavily in planning, visioning, and strategic frameworks while skipping an honest conversation about capacity—who will do the work, with what resources, and on top of what else. She shares how small staffs often take on more initiatives without stopping old ones, and how plans fall apart when unexpected absences occur. Renee argues that a plan without a realistic capacity assessment is a wish list, not a strategy. Before the next planning process, she urges leaders to ask three questions: what can we truly commit to and sustain six months from now, who will own the work after the consultant leaves, and what are we willing to stop doing to make room.

"It's a Brand New Day"

"It's a Brand New Day"

Learn to Thrive! 

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Welcome to Thrive in Five, a new podcast from Thrive Community Partners featuring Sarah Stephens Krupp + Renee Smith.

If you're a community leader, economic developer, chamber professional, nonprofit executive, entrepreneur, or someone working to strengthen your community, you're in the right place.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, your hosts share one practical idea in five minutes or less to help you build stronger organizations, stronger partnerships, and stronger communities.

Drawing from decades of experience in community development, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, grant strategy, leadership, and organizational capacity, each episode offers real-world insights you can put into action immediately.

In this trailer, you'll meet Sarah and Renee, learn why they created Thrive in Five, and get a preview of what's ahead.

Subscribe today and join us as we build, sustain, and grow thriving communities—one conversation at a time.

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